STEPS:; 



G CHRISTIAN? 



1EN BR1DGMAN 




Class JB^Z.4J&3lI 
Book E7S 



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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT, 



Steps Christward 

Counsels for Young Christians 



By 
HOWARD ALLEN BRIDGMAN 



BOSTON 

Ubc flMlarfm press 

CHICAGO 













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Copyright, 1903 
By Howard A. Bridgman 



J, J. Arakelyan, Printer, 2S5 Congress Street, Boston. 



TO MY WIFE 



PREFACE 



For over ten years it has been a duty and privi- 
lege to furnish each week through the columns of 
The Congregationalist a few suggestions concern- 
ing the current topic for the Christian Endeavor 
prayer-meeting. During this period the broad field 
of Christian truth and Christian service has been 
traversed, not in a consecutive and systematic 
fashion, but most of the subjects which engage 
the mind of the disciple of Jesus, or appeal to 
his heart, have been considered. The treatment 
of the themes, though fragmentary and inadequate, 
has received such an undeserved measure of favor 
as to encourage the preparation of a little book 
which may interest a wider audience than that 
originally addressed. 

The material at command has been totally re- 
shaped and a classification made under compre- 
hensive captions with a few sub-topics from page 
to page. A considerable portion of the book is 
altogether new. The author hopes that in its pres- 
ent form it may help fellow travelers in the good 
way -and serve the need of some who would enter 
upon and continue in the life which is life indeed. 

5 



CONTENTS 



I. THE START 

The First Step. What is Life For ? Repenting. De- 
ciding. Confessing. Trusting and Obeying. 
Abiding ....... 9 

II. THE FOES 

The Ceaseless Struggle. Temptation. When the 

Battle is On. Drifting. Dead to Sin . -35 

III. HELPS BY THE WAY 
How Ideals Are Realized. The Daily Discipline. 
The Bible. Prayer. The Church. The Lord's 
Day. The Lord's Supper. Giving. The Help- 
ful Ordering of Life 53 

IV. THE WAYMARKS 
The Worth of Our Days. The Backward Look. The 
Fresh Chance. Signs of Progress. Holding On. 
Inward Assurance. To-day, To-morrow, and 
Then What 89 

V. THE REWARDS 
Joy. Peace. Hope. Guidance. The Presence of 

God. The Graces of the Spirit . . .109 

7 



CONTENTS 



VI. WAYSIDE MINISTRIES 
Our Real Business. Ability Imposes Responsibility. 
Times and Seasons. Ways and Means. Sticking 
to It. Working with Others. The Hopeful 
Attitude. The Reach of Influence . . . 131 

VII. THE GUIDE AND THE GOAL 
Our Own Christ. Lord and Leader. Comrade. 
Brother. High Priest. Saviour. Judge. What 
We Owe to Him. Why We Love Him . . 1 55 



%* 



THE START 



Life is big and demands big ventures. 

— F. W. Tomkins. 

Do not draw back from any way because you have 
never passed there before. — Phillips Brooks. 

There is a great deal that is hidden away in a 
Christian life before we are through with it, but as 
with everything else its beginning stands out in the 
clear. You can set your face Godwards and Christ- 
wards, you can leave off waiting and start, and take 
a step to-day and then you will be in readiness to 
take the next step to-morrow. — C. H. Parkhurst. 



THE START 

There will be many steps after the 7^, 
first, some long, some short ; some firm, First 
some halting; but none of them more Ste P 
important than step number one. To 
go anywhere one must start from where 
he is, and to walk in the way of Christ 
one must, on some forever memorable 
day, call into action all the forces of his 
nature and begin. Impulses from with- 
out may cooperate — a mother's prayers, 
a friend's tender word, a book casually 
encountered, the state of feeling in the 
community, but it is the man him- 
self in his solitary and splendid indi- 
viduality who shakes off his inertia and 
his indifference, and rises up to follow 
Jesus. 

Dr. Pentecost tells about a sleeping- 
car porter whom he once approached 
regarding the matter of personal religion. 

11 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

The " You are going to be a Christian some- 
First time, are n't you ? " he asked, when the 
™ man seemed inclined to postpone a de- 
cision. " Oh, yes, doctor," was the ready 
reply, " but I dreads de process." How 
many persons have kept themselves out 
of the kingdom because they " dread the 
process." I can distinctly remember 
thinking when a lad that I never could 
be a Christian until I had paced the floor 
for a whole night in an agony of spiritual 
unrest. It was an idea derived, presum- 
ably, from the biography of some saint. 
That experience never came, and I do not 
believe that we can lay down in advance 
a certain course of procedure by means 
of which we shall enter the kingdom, 
nor can any one lay it down for us. 
Christian impulses and convictions steal 
in upon us when least expected. It 
may be as we listen to a sermon, or as 
we walk alone under the quiet stars, or 
as we address ourselves to the hard work 
of life. The question with us is not how, 
or when, or where the Spirit of God 
shall overtake us, but what shall be our 
response. 
12 



THE START 



The solemn truth of the matter is that What 
we are going somewhere. Our days ts 
bear us swiftly along to a different out- p or 
ward environment. The inner man is 
changing too. What are they all for — 
these human years ? What ought we to 
do with time and talents, with health and 
reason, with influence and opportunities ? 
What ought we to cast out of our lives ? 
To what should we open the doors of 
our hearts ? Here comes religion with 
its simple, direct answer : There is 
a way that is known as the Christian 
way. It proposes certain definite ideals. 
It calls for a certain attitude of mind 
and will. It imposes certain great gov- 
erning principles of conduct. It prom- 
ises certain rich and satisfying rewards. 
All you need to do at the present mo- 
ment in order to know more about it is 
to start. 

With or without great emotion, with 
or without large knowledge, with or with- 
out much confidence, the start is effected. 
Suffice it for the present that the first 
step is to be made. More feeling will 
come by and by, and a keener under- 

13 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

What standing too. But the look is already 
" forward and little by little the step which 
■p or seems so simple, which really is so 
simple, is seen to have large relationships 
and to involve certain definite acts and 
processes. So we go on to analyze even 
our first venture and to take hold one by 
one of the different elements, using the 
terms familiar to Christian ears, but seek- 
ing to pierce through conventional lan- 
guage to the reality within. 

Repenting Why is it that those few simple words, 
" I am sorry," come so hard to us ? In 
our childhood how many parental per- 
suasions and entreaties, how much ad- 
monition on the part of our teachers, it 
required to bring us to the point where 
we would own to ourselves and to others 
that we had done wrong. Such a con- 
fession, good as it is to the soul in early 
or in later life, knifes our pride. It re- 
duces us to the level of men whom we in 
our pharisaism have denominated sin- 
ners. But it touches the very springs of 
righteous living. A man must go lower 
before he can mount higher. Until a 
14 



THE START 



man senses and hates his sin God can do Repenting 
very little for him. The prodigal who at 
last comes to himself in the far country 
and loathes his rags and his company is 
nearer the kingdom of heaven than the 
cultivated, faultless, unbelieving society 
man, who thinks that he has 

No tear to wipe, no good to crave, 
No fear to quell, no soul to save. 

But penitence involves another step. 
And just as we are all prone to attribute 
to others the cause of our downfall, so 
we are disposed to offer to God some 
other penitential gift than that which he 
desires. Some, like the " Penitentes " of 
New Mexico, lacerate themselves and 
wail like madmen. Some, like the saints 
of the middle ages, put on hair shirts and 
keep long vigils. The Jews, abusing a 
system which was meant to train them in 
righteousness, brought the blood of bulls 
and goats to God, until he cried out that 
he was wearied with such sacrifices and 
his prophet thundered forth, "What 
doth the Lord require of thee, but to do 
justly, and to love mercy, and to walk 
humbly with thy God ? " 

15 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Repenting We fall into the same blunder. We 
think to atone for injustice to one person 
by stricter justice or even by generosity 
to another. We will make up for being 
faithless to one duty by being over-zeal- 
ous in the performance of another. 
This is to make a farce of penitence. 
God wants us to clean up our lives at 
those precise points where we have been 
remiss. The sin which you realize and 
which, from the bottom of your heart, 
you spurn, that is the sin which God 
wants you forever to renounce, and the 
offering which he yearns for is a com- 
plete and immediate right-about-face. 

One may delude himself for a little 
while with the idea that some big ob- 
stacle for which he is not responsible 
lies right athwart his path into the king- 
dom of God, but others know and God 
knows that it is nothing but his own 
pride and self-sufficiency. 

Deciding Two things are involved in the decision 
to be a Christian. One is the intrusting 
to Jesus Christ of our intellectual ques- 
tionings and strivings. We do not aban- 
16 



THE START 



don the exercise of rational thought, nay, Deciding 
Jesus himself bade us to love God with 
all our mind. But we do agree, when 
we become Christians, to leave with 
Christ the great intellectual problems 
that often perplex and battle our faith. 
We say, Here is a man who knows, and 
we accept his testimony regarding God 
and heaven and the meaning of all the 
discipline of these human years. We 
adopt a certain intellectual attitude to- 
ward truth ; we obtain a certain philoso- 
phy. We call these the Christian atti- 
tude, the Christian philosophy. By it 
we mean that we look out upon this 
universe through the eyes of Christ and 
accept his judgment and his estimate of 
values. 

In the second place, we adopt Christ's 
program of life. We say that, instead 
of presuming to order our own way, 
choose our own tasks, work our own 
pleasure, we will receive from Christ the 
practical guidance of all our doing from 
day to day ; we will live for the same 
ends for which Christ lived and died. 
Like him, we will make it our aim 

17 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Deciding always to be well pleasing to the 
Father. 

What an immense difference this two- 
fold commitment of the whole self to 
Christ makes ! There is a vast gulf be- 
tween those who are in the kingdom of 
God and those outside. It is not for us 
to draw a line and determine on which 
side this or that man stands, or to pro- 
claim ostentatiously that all the virtue of 
the world is within the kingdom and all 
the vice outside. But this much is true 
— those within have made one honest 
step toward the kingdom and are trying, 
even though they fail repeatedly, to think 
the thoughts of Jesus and to do his works. 
A decision ought to be made in the 
interests of honesty. Jesus never was 
content and never will be with a certain 
indefinite friendly attitude toward him. 
His word is, « Follow thou me." He is 
seeking, not men in the mass, but John 
and James and Andrew. Is it quite fair 
to evade the simple, searching test which 
he has always laid down as a condition 
of entrance into his service ? At heart 
you are not quite honest when you take 
18 



THE START 



refuge in your kindly instincts toward Deciding 
him and never once actually make that 
definite, personal surrender which he de- 
mands. 

The decision should also be made in 
the interest of peace. Perplexed Pilate 
moaned, " What shall I do with Jesus ? " 
" Try Herod," his cowardly nature sug- 
gested, " try the instincts of the mob, 
appeal to Jewish pride, do anything that 
will make it unnecessary for you to pass 
the final judgment." At last he had 
to settle the question himself. So it 
will ever be. No lasting peace will 
come until like a man you have faced 
the issue. There is a time for delibera- 
tion, but after every possible aspect of 
the case has been thought through there 
comes the time to act. You may be in 
doubt up to the morning of election for 
which candidate you will vote, but if you 
are going to do your duty as a citizen 
you must decide, and in making the de- 
cision touching Jesus Christ, as in mak- 
ing every other decision in life, it is well 
to remember that no question is ever 
settled until it is settled right. 

19 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Deciding If the rejection of Christ to-day be 
only a deliberate refusal to have any- 
thing to do with him — a sharp decision 
against his claims and his cause — then 
the number of those who reject him is 
relatively small. Not many men have 
dared to drive from their hearts all 
thought of Christ, or to declare to them- 
selves or others that they would have 
naught to do with him. Indifference, 
absorption in other things, the dispo- 
sition to wait for a more convenient 
season — these are things which keep 
most men from openly allying them- 
selves with Christ. We cannot believe 
that men taken in the mass are so de- 
praved, so hostile to the Christ of history, 
as to commit the terrible sin which has 
lain like a shadow on the Jewish race 
ever since the cry, " Crucify him. His 
blood be on us and our children," rang 
through the streets of Jerusalem. 

But the sad thing about this matter is 
that indifference, indecision, amount 
practically to a rejection. Sooner or 
later Jesus comes to close quarters with 
every human soul. There is this differ- 



THE START 



ence between him and other spiritual Deciding 
leaders. They put forth their teachings, 
but did not emphasize a personal rela- 
tionship to themselves. Socrates never 
said, " Come unto me, all ye that labor 
and are heavy laden, and I will give you 
rest." Ralph Waldo Emerson never 
said, " Except ye believe that I am he, 
ye shall die in your sins." Browning 
never said, " He that eateth my flesh 
and drinketh my blood hath eternal life." 
Many men drift along for years without 
the nerve to decide this great question, 
but every true man has times when the 
personal Christ presses in upon his life. 
Through some messenger — a yearning 
mother, a devoted teacher, a loving 
friend, a pastor, a pleading evangelist, or 
through one's own reading of the New 
Testament — comes the simple, strenuous 
command, " Follow thou me." 

If the answer is, " Not yet," God in 
his mercy repeats the invitation over and 
over again. Jesus Christ is the most in- 
evitable being who has ever walked this 
earth. We cannot escape him. He is 
continually confronting us in the best 

21 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Deciding literature, the noblest poems, the finest 
statuary and the most beautiful paintings 
of the world. If you reject him in early 
years or do what is equivalent to rejection, 
that is, postpone action with reference 
to him, you are likely, suddenly, in some 
distant corner of the earth, it may be, to 
see the marred face of the Son of man 
as he bends his yearning look on you 
alone. The pathos of life is that while 
the appeal of Christ is no less tender, 
the human heart, as it goes on in sin or 
in indifference, loses its earlier suscepti- 
bility. And the evil effects of one re- 
jection after another accumulate until 
character is undermined, and he who 
was made capable of fellowship with 
God becomes more fit to associate with 
brutes. 

But who can measure the joy and sig- 
nificance of that moment when religion 
as a matter of personal experience really 
grips our hearts ? Is there anything 
more marvelous than that a man hith- 
erto absorbed in self and earthly things 
should suddenly awake to the conscious- 
ness, not only that there is a God some- 
22 



THE START 



where far out in space, but a power close Deciding 
at hand exercising a Father's care and 
pouring out a Father's love ? It is not 
strange that when Christ thus arouses a 
man to a sense of his divine capacities 
and possibilities the world becomes new 
to him and he dates all future events 
from that moment. " It was about the 
tenth hour," said John, many years 
afterwards, as he recalled his first meet- 
ing with Jesus. « It was ten years, six 
months and a half ago last week Thurs- 
day," says the man who bears testimony 
in the Rescue Mission. 

Saints, martyrs, confessors — these have Confessing 
always been linked in the thought of the 
Christian Church and have constituted 
its roll of honor. It is significant that 
those who were outspoken in their faith 
came to be classified by themselves. 
Hunted down by the persecutor, brought 
to bay before kings and councils, they 
recalled the words of their Master about 
confessing him before men. Secret dis- 
cipleship had to be abjured forever. 
The test had come. The line of demar- 

23 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Confessing cation between them and others — some 
of them possibly at heart followers of the 
Nazarene — had to be drawn. They 
must tell it out to the world that they 
believed in Christ. It was, after all, 
only what he had foreseen would come to 
them, and because they stood up like 
men and showed their colors our faith 
has been preserved to us with the radi- 
ance of their testimony upon it. 

Whether a man will confess Christ by 
joining his church is a secondary al- 
though very important question. De- 
cide, first, whether you will confess 
Christ daily as you go to your business, 
not by mumbling his name every few 
minutes nor by making the sign of the 
cross, but by imitating his example. 
After your policy in this respect has 
been determined, the question of joining 
the church will assume a different phase 
and you will be very exceptional if it 
does not seem to you the natural and al- 
most necessary outcome of the other 
decision. 

" But I am not good enough ! " Oh, 
how men misconceive this matter of 
24 



THE START 



confessing Christ ! If you were to stand Confessing 
before a congregation and assert that 
you had made an end of all perfection, 
that you were henceforth to be an ex- 
ample of all the virtues, you might well 
shrink from such pretensions. But it is 
not the good people who confess Christ, 
but the people who want to be good — 
the people broken with the shame of 
their repeated failings and misdeeds, the 
people yearning for a way out of the 
prison house of self into the light and 
liberty of the sons of God. 

" But I am not quite sure whether 
Jesus is divine ! " Does he ask you to 
exhaust the mystery of his being, or 
to estimate his place in the scale of crea- 
tion ? He simply asks you to take him 
for what he himself says he is — the Way, 
the Truth, the Life, the Light of the 
World, the Good Shepherd of the sheep. 

What is this universal instinct that Trusting 
impels one life to commit itself to the and 
care and guidance of another ? We ex- obeying 
pect it in the child as the most natural 
and beautiful trait of childhood, indeed, 

25 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 



Trusting as the indispensable factor in its growth. 
and -pj^ t - me w jjj C ome when the little 
Ubeyinp 

one, if it hopes to be a man by and by, 

must abandon creeping and must totter 
towards the loving arms outstretched so 
near, but far enough away to call for 
some enterprise on the child's part, in 
this the first great venture of his life. In 
the growing youth we see the same 
trait when the home circle is exchanged 
for the boarding-school or college and 
hitherto untried opportunities of educa- 
tion are first made use of. And when 
manhood is reached, and a scientific 
or professional career is entered upon, 
are there not many moments when even 
the wisdom of the wise must wait upon 
the faith element ? 

When the chemist in the laboratory 
institutes certain processes, he trusts that 
the elements with which he is dealing 
will combine and produce certain results. 
Life in all its grades and periods is more 
or less of an experiment. The religious 
word used to describe these ventures 
of the soul and mind is " trust." When 
analyzed it is found to consist of two ele- 
26 



THE START 



ments — first, the letting go of something Trusting 



which had proved fairly sufficient ; and, 
second, the taking hold of something 
stronger and more satisfactory. " Trust " 
means going forward before you are alto- 
gether certain. 

From this point of view, becoming a 
Christian is not anything less rational or 
more difficult than moving forward in any 
department of life. When the child lets 
go the chair and moves unsteadily to- 
wards its mother, it is exercising trust for 
the first time. When a man lets go of 
self, ceases to rely on his own wisdom, 
courage and sufficiency, and moves out 
towards the larger wisdom and power of 
Jesus Christ, he is exercising the supreme 
trust of his life. But there is really no 
more risk in the one step than the other. 
Who ever knew any one who had actu- 
ally exercised this trust in Christ and 
maintained it from day to day confess 
that he made a great mistake? The 
experience of nineteen centuries can be 
taken as guaranty that no man who 
really gives the keeping of his life to 
Christ and complies with the conditions 

27 



and 
Obeying 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Trusting f fellowship with him is destined to 

„. an be either sorry or ashamed. Men talk 

Obeying J 

sometimes as if Christ were a vague, un- 
certain figure in ancient history, whereas 
he is the most potent personality of the 
ages, and in dealing with him we deal 
with a fact which cannot be gainsaid or 
overthrown. 

And the object of all this trust, let us 
not forget, is to obtain strength to do 
the things which he would have us do. 
It is to no dreamy, mystic, rhapsodic ex- 
perience that we are called when we be- 
come Christians, but to put our lives 
alongside the mightiest source of strength 
available for use. It is the " Strong Son 
of God," as Tennyson calls him, with 
whom we have to do, and he has the 
power of communicating strength to all 
who trust him. John recognized it when 
he said, " I have written unto you, young 
men, because ye are strong." Trust is 
not simply a beautiful disposition of the 
soul ; it is the alliance of ourselves with 
a person by whom our weakness is 
turned to strength and our ignorance 
transmuted to knowledge. 
28 



THE START 



Jesus, by common consent, was the Trusting 



wisest and best of men — too wise to be 
mistaken and too good to deceive. 

This is why we put confidence in 
Jesus. Others through the nineteen 
centuries before us have trusted him 
and we rely on their witness. The 
noblest souls in all the ages have testi- 
fied that he deserved and rewarded their 
confidence. 

To trust in him means to believe what 
he says and to do what he bids. When 
he declares that the life is more than 
meat, that we must be born again in 
order to enter his kingdom, that he has 
gone to prepare a place for us, that he 
who sees him has seen the Father, we 
must believe that he knew about what 
he was talking. Then when he outlines 
a course of action for us, orders us to take 
up our cross daily and follow him, sends 
us out into the highways or hedges, 
bids us be pure and peaceable and mer- 
ciful, we must obey. 

The step from a mere interest in Christ 
or an admiration for him to unhesitating 
confidence in him is a logical step but 

29 



and 
Obeying 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Trusting one not always taken. When it is taken 



and 



it admits a man into the real blessedness 



■^ of the Christian life. There will come 
times after that great step when the 
darkness shuts down upon one. Then if 
one trusts Christ unhesitatingly he must 
be willing to go with him up the rough 
slopes and into the fiery furnace. But 
even there he is sure to be cheered by a 
sense of the presence of the Son of man, 
and in due time he will emerge again 
into the sunshine, his hand more firmly 
clasped than before in his Saviour's. 

Abiding Jesus staked his kingdom upon the 
ability and desire of men to enter into a 
personal relation with him even though 
out of the range of their earthly vision. 
It was a tremendous venture. These 
were strange words to speak to unlet- 
tered fishermen. You would expect the 
master of a group of disciples to say 
when parting with them, " Remember 
me, follow the truth, trust God, do your 
duty." But Jesus says something more, 
and let us remember that he is not talk- 
ing to mystics or dabblers in occult 
30 



THE START 



sciences, but to every-day persons like Abiding 
ourselves. In so saying he differentiates 
his religion from every other. He gave 
his followers no creed to recite daily to 
themselves and to pass on to others. 
No set and indispensable forms of wor- 
ship did he devise nor did he specify 
just how they should carry on his work 
when he was gone. But one thing on 
this last night of their earthly fellowship 
he does insist upon, and illustrates his 
thought by allusion to the vines which 
may have been climbing up to the very 
window of the room where they were 
assembled. Henceforth he and his men 
were to be as closely united as branches 
and vine. 

The supreme question then for a man 
who wants to lead the Christian life is, 
" Can I establish and maintain a personal 
relation with Jesus Christ?" This in- 
volves remembrance of him, imitation, 
loyalty, service in his name and some- 
thing more, difficult to define or de- 
scribe but intelligible to any one who 
has let his whole being go forth to an- 
other soul. I cannot think that to" be 

31 



STEPS CHRIS TWARD 

Abiding on terms of friendship with Christ, to be 
united to him, to have his life coursing 
through our veins is so very different 
from the best experience we have of 
human love. I have a friend more than 
half-way across this great continent. I 
see him rarely, but he is as much of an 
inspiration and blessing to me as he was 
in the days when we were often comrades 
from morn till eve. I have a Friend 
whom I have never seen. He lived long 
ago in Palestine, but every noble im- 
pulse and conviction of my nature some- 
how relates itself to him. I am sure that 
it is perfectly possible to keep up a hearty, 
wholesome friendship with him if I do 
my part. It is easy to let it cool, but to 
maintain it is worth all the pains it costs. 
" But this is all mysticism," some one 
says* Yes, but it is the most sensible 
and rational kind of mysticism that the 
world has ever known. The simple fact 
is that Jesus Christ is the best known 
man of history. We know far more 
about him than we possibly can about 
Julius Caesar, Charlemagne or Napoleon. 
One reason is that he has been the sub- 
32 



THE START 



ject of the minutest and the hardest 
study that any character ever received. 
Every new life of Christ adds to the 
world's understanding of Jesus. The 
other reason is that the Christ life has 
been relived so many times before our 
eyes, in our homes, on our streets, not 
perfectly, to be sure, but genuinely, that 
we have had and shall have countless 
human interpretations of the historical 
Jesus. Therefore we too may have per- 
sonal union with this clear-cut, real, 
heroic figure of history. 

This is the best and also the simplest 
way of maintaining the Christian life 
and developing a Christian experience. 
Books on morality say, " Keep your 
courage up, do n't whine, be pure, love 
your neighbor as yourself." It all 
sounds very fine and it is just what we 
ought to do. Yet we cannot always 
abide in fortitude, in purity, in love as 
abstract virtues. But we can abide in 
Christ, the source and example of them 
all ; we can join our lives to his so that 
what was in him shall be little by little 
transferred to us. 

33 



THE FOES 



When the fight begins within himself 
A man's worth something. 

— Robert Browning. 

Battle I know so long as life remaineth — 
Battle for all, but these have overcome. 

— F. W. H. Myers. 

O thou for whom the strife was strong, 
Thou who hast sung the conqueror's song, 
Uphold me through the holy war, 
Make me a smiling conqueror. 

— Thomas H. Gill. 



II 

THE FOES 

When Mr. Moody was holding large The 
meetings in New York City on his first re- Ceaseless 
turn from England a number of years ago ** 
he was going back to his lodgings late 
at night accompanied by a friend or two. 
As they passed along the little group 
noticed that they were being followed by 
a man, and one of Mr. Moody's friends, 
aware of the opposition to him among 
the rumsellers of the city, warned him 
to be on his guard ; but the evangelist, 
raising his voice a little, said, " What 
would you say if a man should ask you 
how to get free from sin ? " The words 
were hardly out of his lips when the un- 
known man in the rear darted forward, 
crying, " That is just what I want to 
know." 

It is singular how this sense of sin 
survives from age to age, even though 

37 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

The people become better housed and better 
Ceaseless educated and various theories are ad- 
rtt ii e vanced to explain sin entirely away. 
But it will last as long as high ideals of 
character survive, as long as men com- 
mit themselves to the moral struggle 
with any degree of earnestness and per- 
sistence ; for there can be no morality 
or spirituality without their opposites, 
and the fight is an eternal one between 
the things that make for man's over- 
throw and ruin and the things that make 
for his salvation. 

If we had lived in the early Christian 
centuries or at the time of the Crusades, 
or had served with Cromwell or Miles 
Standish or other stalwart representatives 
of muscular Christianity, it might have 
been easier for us to appreciate the fact 
that our religion has its fighting side. In 
these latter times we are, perhaps, in dan- 
ger of becoming what some one terms 
" carpet- slipper Christians." But if we 
read our New Testaments faithfully, and 
if we follow the careers of Jesus and Paul, 
we shall discover that the only reason why 
we do not encounter more opposition and 
38 



THE FOES 



do not have our righting qualities called The 
into exercise is that we have too little Cease Isss 
genuine religion. The highest type of ru ^ e 
religion in any age is sure to come into 
collision with worldly standards. It must 
suffer. It must show the scars of battle. 
What have we ever done, what did we do 
to-day or last week, that may prove to the 
world that we are loyal soldiers of the 
great Captain of our salvation ? 

One does have to fight to maintain his 
habits of secret prayer, to do justice to 
his Bible daily, to perform patiently the 
routine Christian duties and to overcome 
the thousand and one little foes that con- 
front us at every turn. We think we have 
won the battle, but the months go by and 
the enemy shows a strong front again. 
And even when you have thoroughly 
overcome one bad habit, or finally tri- 
umphed over some terrible foe to society, 
you need not think you can lay your 
armor by, for some other besetting sin 
will at once disclose itself to you, or some 
kindred giant to that one just slain will 
challenge you to combat. Said Charles 
Kingsley : " Some say the age of chivalry 

39 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

is past. The age of chivalry is never 
past so long as one wrong remains unre- 
dressed." 

Temptation I should like sometime to read a care- 
fully written book on the psychology of 
temptation, prepared from actual inves- 
tigation of the way it works. There 
is nothing in the world more subtle and 
deceitful. There was once a small boy 
who had been forbidden from going in 
swimming too often. He returned home 
one day with unmistakable signs that he 
had been in the water. When his mother 
remonstrated with him he replied, " Yes, 
I know, mamma, I did wrong, but I was 
tempted." " But how did you happen 
to have your bathing-suit with you?" 
" Well, I took it along, thinking I might 
be tempted." How often we capitulate in 
advance to a temptation ! Then, too, we 
delude ourselves with the idea that we may 
be the exceptional person for whom God 
will relax his punishment. While his laws 
work generally in the universe, we think 
we may be granted a special permit to do 
what we please and special exemption 
40 



THE FOES 



from the consequences. Still more devil- Temptation 

ish, because it touches us on the higher 

side of our natures, is the suggestion that, 

even if we do wrong, God is so fatherly 

and we know him so well that if we 

go to him penitently he will forgive us. 

So again, before the battle is on, we 

strike our colors in the most cowardly 

fashion. 

When the word temptation is uttered 
it suggests to most persons the wine-cup 
or the gaming-table, or some well recog- 
nized and flagrant form of sin; but we 
who are real Christians ought soon to 
be beyond the power of these grosser 
temptations. Not that we should proudly 
think ourselves invulnerable, or despise 
those who are beset by them, but rather 
that we should be the more vigilant to 
conquer our finer, but no less real, tempta- 
tions. Not many persons who may read 
these lines are tempted to profanity, but 
how about envy, pride, dilatoriness, slov- 
enliness of person, rudeness of action, 
hypocrisy, gossip, anger, discontent, de- 
spair ? These are the little foxes that are 
all the time preying upon our vines. It 

41 



STEPS CHRIST WARD 

Temptatio?i is too bad that we cannot sit down quietly 
by our own fireside or kneel meekly in 
church without being pursued by the 
tempter, but lo, sin lieth at the door. 

He who orders our lives has, however, 
made ample provision for our deliverance. 
Jesus Christ is never of more value to us 
than when he comes to reinforce our 
weak will in its strife with evil. The 
Bible is explicit on this point, and when 
it says that he was tempted in all points 
like as we are, we should take the state- 
ment on its face value. " But," says the 
conductor of an electric car, " Jesus Christ 
never stood on the back platform and 
endured what I have to stand from the 
company and the public." " But," says 
a woman in the midst of the pressing de- 
mands of modern society life, " Jesus 
Christ, that simple Galilaean peasant, was 
never situated just as I am." " But," says 
some person isolated among the hills, hun- 
gering for the stir and the opportunities 
of the city, " Jesus Christ never passed 
through this experience." Yes he did, or 
its equivalent. Sometime, perhaps, I can 
explain it better, but I believe with all my 
42 



THE FOES 



heart that this many-sided, universal man Temptation 
met and conquered the equivalent of all 
of the world's temptations, not those of 
ancient time alone, or of Eastern lands, 
but those of modern times and of Occi- 
dental countries as well. And when we 
reflect that he mastered not a few tempta- 
tions, but all, how his sinlessness glistens 
and glows before our eyes ! 

Realizing then how seamed and scarred When 
our natures are, how responsive to evil f ^ e 
suggestions and downward tendencies, . q 
what next ? The fight, to be sure. But 
we pause a moment before we draw the 
sword, since penitence, contrition of 
heart, commitment of ourselves to God's 
mercy, must precede any effort of ours 
to get rid of our sins. As President 
Tucker says, " God can do little for a 
man until he has forgiven him." The 
experience of Christians through the 
ages, voicing itself in such hymns as " I 
lay my sins on Jesus " and " There is a 
fountain filled with blood," can be cited 
as proof that a disordered human heart, 
conscious of inherited tendencies down- 

43 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 



When ward and its own frequent lapses from 
the virtue, requires first of all God's healing 

is On toucn - Yet we are not to forget that 
Jesus bade us ask that our debts be for- 
given as we forgive our debtors. No 
full and gladdening forgiveness can come 
to a man who approaches the mercy- 
seat with resentment burning in his heart 
toward his brother. 

Once forgiven by our heavenly Father, 
once rid of the stain and shame of our 
sins, we can begin open warfare upon 
them. The late President Seelye of 
Amherst used to say that the more 
specific the battle against our sins the 
more likelihood of success. Sin in the 
abstract is so large and so deeply rooted 
that we almost despair of overcoming it, 
but the concrete sins that reside in the 
temper, the feeling, the imagination, the 
will — these little foxes that spoil the 
vines — cowardice, avarice, impatience, 
uncharitableness, irritability, impurity — 
these foes we can face and vanquish. 
How exhilarating, after all, it is, when 
one has sought and found forgiveness 
and has come into possession of God's 
44 



THE FOES 



powerful aid, to sally forth and make war When 
to the knife upon these enemies of our ^ 
souls ! No crusader of old, starting out is Q n 
to rescue the Saviour's grave from the 
Saracen, could feel any greater enthusi- 
asm than it is possible for us to have as 
we fight to-day and here the nobler 
battle against spiritual enemies. 

The possibility of a flank movement is 
also to be considered. Some sins can 
best be overcome by the indirect method. 
That apostle had this line of attack in 
mind when he wrote, " Who is he that 
will harm you, if ye be zealous of that 
which is good?" And his brother 
apostle cherished the same thought 
when he told his converts not to be 
overcome of evil, but to overcome evil 
by good. There is great latent fighting 
capacity in the " expulsive power of a 
new affection." Satan finds little en- 
trance into the heart that is daily set on 
achieving righteousness, that is eager to 
fill life full of unselfish service. The 
blows of the antagonist fall with no 
effect upon the man encased in the whole 
armor of God. Fill life up with noble 

45 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

acts, and the battle against sins will be 
more than half won. 

Drifting But life may be figured as a voyage as 
well as a battle. Certainly those who 
have once set their faces toward God 
and goodness are no more in danger 
of conscious and wilful departure from 
the right course than of a quiet, imper- 
ceptible backward movement. The man 
in the boat hardly realizes that he is go- 
ing down stream. He has only been 
idly rocking or resting on his oars, with 
the purpose by and by of again bending 
to them, but suddenly he looks up and 
notes that he is considerably farther 
away from certain points on the bank 
than he was only a short while before. 
The Christian youth, full of good inten- 
tions, but allowing himself to take a little 
vacation as respects religious testimony 
and service, encounters this same sensa- 
tion of surprise when something occurs 
to turn his thought in upon himself. He 
has not been doing anything very bad, 
but he has been drifting, and, if he will 
be honest with himself, he will confess 
46 



THE FOES 



that his spiritual condition is far less Drifting 
satisfactory than it was. 

What are some of the things from 
which we are in danger of drifting? 
First, from our early ideals. Longfel- 
low's sweet poem, The Castle Builder, 
pictures a little boy putting one block 
upon another, and the great poet en- 
courages him by saying : 

Build on, and make thy towers high and fair, 
Rising and reaching upward to the skies, 

Listen to voices in the upper air, 

Lose not thy simple faith in mysteries. 

Many of us have drifted far from our 
childhood's faith in mysteries, from our 
ideals of what we would be and do in the 
world. Once we thought we might be 
foreign missionaries or do some heroic 
service for Christ in some hard or dark 
corner of the earth. Life has moved on 
with us and we now smile a little at those 
childish notions. But if we cannot now 
hear " the voices in the upper air," if we 
are not moved by those high ideals of 
duty which once thrilled us, we have 
drifted far and sadly. 

47 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Drifting We are likely to drift from our faith 
in men. As we rub against them in the 
world and see their weaknesses, as we 
may suffer injustice or betrayal at their 
hands, or as we simply look at them in 
the mass and notice how animal many 
of the faces are, we find it hard to be- 
lieve Christ's words, " How much then is 
a man of more value than a sheep ! " But 
we must cling to the divine estimate of 
our poor humanity. We cannot serve 
men as we ought unless we see in them 
divine possibilities. 

We need, too, to guard against the 
drift away from a personal comradeship 
with Jesus Christ. Most of us have had 
in our experience what Phillips Brooks 
used to call " Jesus moments," when he 
seemed near and dear. But it is hard in 
the stress of the world to maintain that 
intimacy. Yet the strength and use- 
fulness of our Christian life depend 
upon it. 

Dead It was a splendid conception of their 
to Sin new ijf e j n th e world and of their posi- 
tion in the sight of God which Paul 

48 



THE FOES 



set forth when he counseled those who Dead 
had only recently emerged from a t0 Sin 
heathen state to count themselves as 
if they were forever rid of the old 
nature, and instead of being dead in 
trespasses and sins as now dead to sin. 

That is the way a man should now 
and then look at himself. It is not 
a mere temporary burst of enthusiasm 
growing out of revulsion from the old 
life and the first great charm of the new ; 
it is the status to which every redeemed 
man is moving and which God in his 
compassion looks upon as already 
achieved, provided the will has once 
been steadily set toward that goal. As 
Canon Gore says in his Incarnation of 
the Son of God : " God deals with us 
by anticipation." So Paul's eye, that 
pierces the future, sees the Christian 
man as already complete in Christ. 
Over and again in his writings he insists 
upon the necessity of putting down an 
impassable barrier between the old life 
of sin and the new life of faith. 

Of course this idea is not to be toler- 
ated for an instant apart from the other 

49 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Dead great idea of Paul, that we are continually 
t0 Stn working out our own salvation, but it is 
a simple fact that as men go on in their 
Christian life they do become dead to 
particular sins. You cannot possibly 
associate drunkenness or gambling with 
certain men. Perhaps they have always 
been dead to them, but certainly they 
have reached a point now when it is im- 
possible to conceive of their falling away 
in these particulars. Their whole moral 
nature is set in the opposite direction. 

Oh, if this could only be said regard- 
ing the entire circle of sins that do so 
easily beset us ! How many a man 
would give half of what he possesses 
if the faults and failings which he has 
been fighting more or less earnestly all 
his life could forever be sloughed off! 
Among the subjects which Phillips 
Brooks once jotted down in his note- 
book for future uses in the pulpit was 
this : " A sermon on a man's discover- 
ing a meanness in himself from which 
he thought he was free, coming from 
new circumstances, e. g., traveling." Is 
not this a frequent experience with us 
50 



THE FOES 



all ? Yet Paul says that even these old Dead 
and persistent foes can be mastered, but t0 Sin 
the new principle alone will do it. 
One's nature must flower out on the 
side toward Christ before the weeds 
in the garden can be completely up- 
rooted. Christ alone furnishes a new in- 
terest and a new motive and a new 
ideal ; most of all his own life steals into 
ours and subtly transforms it. The oak- 
tree keeps its leaves throughout all the 
wintry storms and no blast of the north 
wind can detach them ; but let the new 
sap of the springtime begin to creep up 
through trunk and branches and the 
faded leaves fall off of themselves. 



51 



HELPS BY THE WAY 



Did we in our own strength confide, 
Our striving would be losing. 

— Luther. 

I believe there is no means of preserving recti- 
tude of conduct and nobleness of aim but the grace 
of God obtained daily, almost hourly waiting upon 
him and continual faith in his immediate presence. — 
John Ruskin. 

Prayer is the greatest power in the world. My 
own prayer has been weak, wavering, inconstant, yet 
it has been the best thing I have ever done. — S. C. 
Armstrong. 

Lord, this morning I read a chapter in the Bible 
and therein observed a memorable passage whereof 
I never took notice before. — Fuller. 



/// 

HELPS BY THE WAY 

A man may live near an excellent How 

gymnasium and still be round-shouldered Ideals 

and spindle-shanked, because of his fail- a ™ ,. , 
,. ,1 , , Realtzed 

ure to realize how undeveloped he is 

physically. A youth may spend a 
winter at Berlin or in Dresden and get 
no musical or artistic uplift. Little can 
be done for one who does not realize 
that he is put into this world to grow. 
Christian life for many of us is arrested 
or recedes simply because we think that 
joining the church or the Young People's 
Society is the end of the whole matter. 
We have lost sight of our ideals. Look 
again at Jesus Christ. How are we 
poor, stunted, one-sided, selfish speci- 
mens of humanity ever to resemble that 
beautiful, glorious One? Do we think 
that our souls can emerge from the dark 
and sordid places where they grovel 

55 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

How and deteriorate, into the light and liberty 
Ideals f children of God, if we do nothing 
Realized ours elves? Are we so foolish as to 
believe that by living in a so-called 
Christian community we shall somehow 
or other be propelled along into the 
kingdom of heaven ? Said Bushnell, in 
his incisive way, " The injunction to 
abide in Christ does n't mean to bask in 
Christ." The will must assert itself, 
must command all our faculties, mental 
and spiritual, to fall into line with the 
Christian ideals. 

Spiritual growth is dependent upon 
the use of the forces which make for 
that end. As well might the sailor 
undertake to cross the ocean without 
adjusting his canvas to the winds as for 
the spiritually-minded man to expect to 
make steady advance in the holy life 
without having every chamber of his 
soul open to the breezes that bring 
to him the ozone and the impulse of the 
spiritual world. It is hard work trying 
to pull one's self up by one's boot-straps. 
If the Bible makes anything clear it 
is the truth that the man who really 
56 



HELPS BY THE WAY 

wants to be better can command the aid How 
of mighty supernatural forces, and by ldeals 
them be lifted to higher levels. Let us ji ea n ze j 
not think that any multiplication of ma- 
chinery, any new methods, any patent 
devices, can take the place of daily 
reliance upon those spiritual forces with 
which the busy world in which we move 
is crowded, even though they are not 
visible to mortal eyes. 

When a practice becomes a part of our > 

daily routine it influences us powerfully 7^ 
thenceforth. What we do every day Daily 
comes soon to stamp itself upon our Discipline 
characters and upon our faces, too. 
What we do once in a while, when we 
feel like doing it and when there is noth- 
ing more interesting to do, makes only a 
little ripple on the swiftly flowing stream. 
If I observe that at a certain time every 
day an acquaintance of mine walks into 
a saloon, I draw some natural, and prob- 
ably just, inferences respecting him. The 
youth who sets apart an hour a day for 
practice on the piano or violin, and per- 
severes in the habit, is bound, provided 

57 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

The he possesses any talent whatever, to 
£. . a ,?y attain to some degree of proficiency. 
What wonders can be accomplished by 
one who reads systematically, devot- 
ing perhaps only fifteen minutes a day 
to some good book ! Whole libraries 
are thereby mastered in the course of 
years. 

Our religious habits need to be estab- 
lished in precisely this same fashion. It 
would be an immense gain if we could 
overcome our fitfulness in religious 
things. We dabble with this matter of 
personal piety. Our Christian progress 
is subject to many periods of retrogres- 
sion simply because we rely on transient 
enthusiasms and passing moods. Let us 
get our religion into the thick of our 
day's work. Let us consider it as much 
a part of our regimen as our daily bath. 
We do not wait for that until we feel 
particularly enthusiastic about it. We 
take it as a matter of course, as an essen- 
tial to healthful living. 

The Every soldier has his book of tactics, 
Bttk to which he constantly refers. The 
58 



HELPS BY THE WAY 

Christian's chief reliance as he under- The 
takes to master the fine art of noble Sible 
living is the Bible. No amount of 
higher criticism can make the Bible any 
less essential to spiritual growth than our 
fathers found it to be. It tells us, as no 
other book ever does or can, what it is to be 
good and, best of all, how we can attain 
goodness. Is not such a book as that 
to be taken in our hands and pondered 
every day we live? I should not insist 
upon mere rigidity of rules. There may 
be circumstances that justify an occa- 
sional omission, but at the end of a 
month or the end of a week a man 
should bring himself before the bar of 
his conscience and ask if, during that 
time, he has bestowed upon his Bible the 
time and attention he would have given 
it had he set apart, say, ten minutes a 
day to its perusal. 

System is secondary, provided the de- 
sire to learn and to grow through perusal 
of Scripture exists. The trouble with 
most of us is not a lack of effective sys- 
tems, but a lack of determination to 
persevere in carrying out one system. 

59 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

The There is an abundance of good plans for 

J3 '7 7 

1 Bible reading and study. ,The Chris- 
tian Endeavor organization furnishes 
one, the Y. M. C. A. suggests another, 
the Sunday-school Quarterlies outline 
still another. Almost every week wit- 
nesses the printing of some book or 
pamphlet which, if rightly used, will aid 
in opening up the Scriptures. Professor 
Walter F. Adeney's How to Read the 
Bible, is an admirable guide. The series 
of handbooks entitled The Modern 
Reader's Bible, edited by Professor 
Moulton of Chicago University, has 
made many of the books of the Bible 
new to those already familiar with 
them. Surely we ought to be thankful 
that we live in an age not of heavy, 
bulky and abstruse commentaries, but 
of cheap, attractive and scholarly 
manuals on Bible study and Bible 
reading. 

It does not, to be sure, require a large 
supply of even such excellent helps as 
these in order to find out what the Bible 
teaches. One could get along fairly 
well, as respects the New Testament. 
60 



HELPS BY THE WAY 

with Marcus Dods' Introduction. We The 
surely do not want to substitute books ^Me 
about the Bible for the Bible itself, but 
we may make profitable use of the re- 
sults reached by men who have grown 
gray in bending over the pages of Holy 
Writ. While the Bible is simple enough 
to be understood by an ordinary mind, 
it is also true that we do not get at its 
richest lessons and inspirations unless we 
are willing to use our mental faculties 
upon it in the same way in which we ap- 
ply them to the study of general history 
or literature. 

What the average young person needs 
most is an actual knowledge of the con- 
tents of a given passage. How few can 
narrate accurately such familiar stories as 
that of the prodigal son or of the good 
Samaritan! We glide over the surface 
of Scripture. Frequent reading of it in 
the house of God secures from us only a 
mechanical attention. Study your Bible 
until you actually know how, in its broad 
outlines, the gospel of Luke differs from 
the gospel of John ; what Paul is trying 
to teach in Galatians as over against his 

61 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

The instructions to Timothy ; what the book 
Bible Q f j os hua actually tells about the con- 
quest of the Holy Land. It is little 
short of a disgrace that intelligent Chris- 
tians know so little of what the Bible 
sets forth in the way of historical fact. 
Any kind of criticism is better than such 
dense ignorance as to what the pages of 
the Bible contain. There are seventeen 
books in the New Testament, any one 
of which can be read through in from 
seventeen to twenty minutes. 

We are to study the Bible to obtain 
food for our spiritual lives. No Chris- 
tian can be strong for service who does 
not keep in constant contact with God's 
revelation of himself through the Scrip- 
tures. Intellectual mastery of the argu- 
ment in Romans for justification by faith 
is worth much, but a simple, childlike 
surrender to Christ is worth more. A 
discernment of the overruling Providence 
which guided the steps of the children of 
Israel is important, but of still more con- 
sequence is it to obtain a sure sense that 
as God was with the fathers so is he 
with us. 

62 



HELPS BY THE WAY 

Suppose each person in a parlor com- Prayer 
pany undertakes to write on paper what 
he or she considers to be the absolute 
necessities of life. There would be some 
amusing differences and some surprising 
resemblances in the lists. And when 
one thinks the matter through he is 
likely to come to the unexpected con- 
clusion that, after all, for the average 
person, only two or three things are ab- 
solutely necessary. We all must have 
some one to love and something to do. 
Silk hats, beautiful gowns, handsome 
equipages, delicate viands — we can get 
along without any or all of these. But 
we must have friends and we must have 
work. These were the two great neces- 
sities of Jesus' life. He could not possi- 
bly dispense with his friends or with his 
work. They were two of the forces that 
brought his nature to its completion. 

One more force explains Jesus Christ 
and that is equally important for our de- 
velopment, too. Prayer was the back- 
ground and atmosphere of Christ's hu- 
man years. He never could have done 
his work well or loved his friends wisely 

63 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Prayer unless there had been those vigils on the 
mountainside, that wrestling in Geth- 
semane. There is no other alternative 
for us, either. The order of the universe 
is such that only he who comes into 
personal fellowship with God through 
prayer renders the fullest service of 
which he is capable and loves his own 
and the world wisely and beneficently. 

This is not theory but fact. Look 
over the shining list of the men and 
women whom the world honors as its 
greatest moral and spiritual leaders. 
You will find that almost without excep- 
tion they were men and women of prayer. 
If we want to get results in our work 
and in our love, we must come into ac- 
cord with the method by which this uni- 
verse is ordered. Stop speculating about 
prayer, or, if you will, the existence of 
a God, but put yourself every day in a 
humble, reverent, receptive attitude. 
Talk out into space as if there were a 
God there, and as day follows night you 
will find hope and power stealing into 
your life. Availing yourself of the ma- 
chinery at hand, it operates in your be- 
64 



HELPS BY THE WAY 

half as it has invariably in behalf of peni- Prayer 
tent, aspiring souls since the world began. 

And there is something more to prayer 
than a reflex influence on mood and 
temper. It is our business to pray even 
when our only hope is by that means to 
change the current of our thought and 
feeling. But he who persists finds sooner 
or later a living, personal God. One 
who habituates himself to prayer, who 
makes it as much a part of his daily 
routine as his meals or sleep or exercise, 
soon obtains precious tokens of God's in- 
terest and care. He does not say so 
much about them perhaps to others, but 
he learns to watch for the answers to his 
petitions and they come in the most sur- 
prising and delightful ways. 

Yes, prayer is absolutely necessary if 
one is seeking to be a religious person 
at all. Is there a problem touching our 
spiritual growth and service which prayer 
cannot solve ? In the beautiful words of 
Archbishop Trench : 

We kneel, how weak, we rise, how full of power ! 
Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong, 
Or others — that we are not always strong ; 

65 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Prayer That we should ever weak or heartless be, 
That we are ever overborne with care, 
Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer, 
And joy and strength and courage, are with thee ? 

And from Robertson of Brighton let us 
take this solemn injunction : " Go not, 
my friend, into the dangerous world 
without it. . . . We may get experi- 
ence, but we cannot get back the rich 
freshness and strength which were 
wrapped up in those moments." 

Prayer ought to become as fixed a 
habit as that of going to the table for 
our food and drink. It is not something 
unnatural and mysterious — it is the most 
simple and sensible procedure in the 
world. As Professor George P. Fisher 
says in substance : " A man is never 
more of a man than when he enters into 
his closet and shuts the door in order 
to commune with his Father in secret." 
Let us divest the function of prayer of 
its abnormal and remote character. 
That a man should talk with his God 
and Redeemer day by day — is this any- 
thing to wonder at or be ashamed of? 
The mystery is that men with divine in- 
66 



HELPS BY THE WAY 

fluences within them should hermetically Prayer 
seal their lives against God by neglecting 
prayer. To be sure, there may come 
times, as in the case of any other habit, 
when we do not feel in the need of 
prayer, but do we never go to the table 
when our appetites are not keen ? The 
working man realizes that he must eat 
if he is to perform his daily toil. Are 
there never times when those who love 
each other deeply do not feel demonstra- 
tive, but on that account do they cease 
from uttering a civil good-morning or 
good-night, or do they refrain from all 
communication with each other ? Prayer 
is the medium through which our love 
and zeal are kindled, and we ought to 
pray more earnestly when we are least 
disposed to seek God. 

Yet it is a comfort to think in the 
midst of our busy days that God does 
not ask for lengthy petitions or insist 
upon any prescribed method. The great 
German scholar Bengel had the reputa- 
tion of being gifted in prayer, and one 
night some people assembled under his 
window to overhear, if they might, his 

67 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Prayer petitions. But he toiled late over his 
books, and when bedtime came he 
dropped on his knees a moment merely 
to say, " Lord Jesus, I thank thee that 
we are on the same old terms." Happy 
the man who knows the way to the 
throne of grace sufficiently well to em- 
ploy such language ! 

Certainly a variation both in language 
and in method is beneficial. In the 
summer-time pray in the open air. Use 
occasionally for your own petitions some 
of the great collects of the church or 
other printed prayers. Pray with some 
one else. How seldom does one Chris- 
tian seek another saying, " Brother, I 
should like to have a word of prayer 
with you with regard to some one dear 
to me, or with regard to the church 
which we both attend, or with regard to 
this place where we live." 

To want to know how to pray indicates 
that one is growing spiritually. How the 
Saviour's heart must have thrilled when 
his disciples approached him, not with a 
speculative question, like that put by 
Nicodemus or the woman of Samaria, 



HELPS BY THE WAY 

not with a request for some outward good, Prayer 
as when later he was asked to grant to 
James and Joh-n special places of honor, 
but possessed with a sincere longing to 
know how to approach God in prayer! 
Their words represent the yearning of 
humanity at its best all through the ages. 
" How shall I come and appear before 
God ? " One who honestly takes this 
petition on his lips, whether he be living 
in the midst of pagan darkness or in a 
Christian environment, is headed toward 
the kingdom of God ; nay, is already in 
it, because at last he has awakened to 
that restlessness of heart which can never 
be stilled until one rests in the bosom of 
God. 

It is a great step in advance when we 
realize that in a certain sense prayer is an 
art, that it must be learned as other arts 
are, that one has not really learned to 
pray simply because, in the stress of a 
great fear, as on the deck of a sinking 
vessel, he cries out for deliverance from 
drowning to a God whom he never really 
sought before. That single utterance is 
tinctured with superstition. It repre- 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Prayer sents a stage of life only one remove from 
heathenism. To pray as a child of God, 
as a disciple of Jesus ought to pray re- 
quires months and years of practice. Not 
that the little child does not truly pray 
when it offers its evening prayer at its 
mother's knee, but that as life goes-on a 
man must give time and thought and his 
best energy to the act of prayer. It is 
no easy business. There must be at times 
the wrestle with God. Only sheer de- 
termination and perseverance can over- 
come apathy and indifference and the ebb- 
tide of faith. Prayer is the sublimest 
exercise in which a man can indulge and 
at the same time the most strenuous. 

Christ helps his inquiring disciples by 
prescribing a form. We shall never out- 
grow it and never find its equal. But as 
we employ it so constantly we do well to 
enrich our petitions and stimulate the 
prayerful spirit by availing ourselves of 
language accredited by long usage, 
through which devout hearts have ex- 
pressed their sense of need and their long- 
ing for pardon, peace and joy in believ- 
ing. There are standard works of devotion 
70 



HELPS BY THE WAY 

to which fresh compilations are constantly Prayer 
being added and they may be made of 
immense value in quickening the flow of 
feeling and in furnishing us with words, 
which, better than any we might be able 
ourselves to choose, voice the desires 
of our hearts. Such meditation on the 
great things of God, on the reality of his 
fatherly relation, helps us to find him 
near when we kneel before him and 
helps us also to frame our desires in 
language. 

Connection with an organization be- 7-^ 
comes a joy only when one is in thorough Church 
sympathy with its principles and aims. 
No amount of- argument can convince 
me that it is my duty to join, or that I 
should find any pleasure in belonging to, 
a fire-engine company or to the state 
militia or to a farmer's grange. For 
such organizations, when properly con- 
ducted, I have a great respect, but just 
at present I have other and more absorb- 
ing interests. It is just as vain to labor 
with a man with reference to church 
membership, unless he cares in a hearty 

71 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

The way for Christianity. And if he has be- 
Church C ome a Christian he ought not to need 
much urging. 

If his Christian life be at all deep and 
purposeful, he will go where he belongs. 
What Christ, his Master, wants him to 
do will weigh considerably with him. 
What most of his fellow believers have 
done will also have its influence. He 
will reason about it in the same sensible 
fashion which he has used in settling 
other relations. He has allied himself 
with a certain political party, not because 
its opinions as expressed in its platforms 
are in every minute particular his own, 
not because the party is absolutely free 
from men whom he dislikes and distrusts, 
but because, on the whole, he wishes to 
be counted among those who are known 
as believers in certain political doctrines, 
and because he thinks that through such 
an alliance he will be better able to fulfil 
the duties of a patriotic citizen. In 
short, the true disciple of Christ does not 
usually hide behind excuses which are 
simply pretexts. He is too manly and 
straightforward to indulge in a specious 

72 



HELPS BY THE WAY 

kind of reasoning, which if applied to The 
other human relations would cut him c ^ urc ^ 
off entirely from all formal association 
with his fellow men. 

Now and then, let us frankly admit, 
we find exceptions — men who are 
humble and sincere Christians and yet 
not connected with any church. But 
what is the most frequent and the best 
excuse which these friends of ours have 
to offer ? Is it not this, that they think 
they can be just as good Christians with- 
out joining the church ? Possibly they 
may be so different from the rest of 
their kind that this claim of theirs is 
true. Perhaps they are superior to the 
help and inspiration of the church — its 
noble worship, its stately hymns, its 
blessed sacraments, its history and tradi- 
tions. The thought of all its saints and 
martyrs may carry no appeal to such a 
one ; but if he cannot be persuaded by 
considerations of his own need of the 
church, will he not remember that others 
weaker than he are by his example de- 
prived of the strength which might 
come through church membership? 

73 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

The And the better the man is who stays 
Church ou tside the more harmful is his influence, 
for others point to him as one who is 
"just as good as your church members 
and a good sight better than many of 
them." If we look upon church mem- 
bership as one of the most sacred and 
precious relationships of our lives, we 
shall find it yielding greater and more 
solid satisfactions day by day. 



The i n considering what benefit he may de- 
Lord's 
Day 



rive from an established and accredited 
institution the Christian is toound to have 
regard to its historical standing and use. 
He finds that the nations and individuals 
whose lives have been purest and most 
influential in the world have kept Sunday. 
A little deeper study tells him that the 
need of such a day is rooted deep in the 
constitution of man. God knew when he 
appointed it that the physical nature of 
man could not endure uninterrupted toil, 
and experimentation by at least one nation 
—the French — has proved that it is dif- 
ficult to improve on the divine plan of 
one day in seven. God knew also that 
74 



HELPS BY THE WAY 



Day 



man's spiritual nature as well demanded The 
the relief and the uplift of a periodic 7^" 
breaking away from the daily routine in 
order to give the soul a better chance to 
develop its powers. This, then, is the 
twofold object of the day, rest and worship, 
and its providential design is defeated 
just as much when the day is entirely 
given to exhausting work, even Christian 
work, as when no regard is paid to the 
claims of the sanctuary. 

When it comes to practical matters the 
Christian must be guided in his decisions 
by the effort to make the day in his case 
serve these two ends. With due deference 
to the opinion of others older and wiser 
than himself and to Christian public senti- 
ment in the community where he is, and 
without forgetting that a method to secure 
even these desirable ends is itself ques- 
tionable when it interferes with another 
man's right and opportunity to keep the 
Sabbath, we are to decide, each for him- 
self and each in the light of Christ's 
teachings and example, what we may do 
and what we may not do on Sunday. 

Should our Sabbaths be different from 

75 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 



The other days ? Yes. " The world is too 
Lord's muc h with us." We do not want the 
* news of the universe dumped on break- 
fast-tables Sunday morning. Politics and 
business and fashions and amusements 
have a sufficiently long term of supremacy 
when they hold sway six days out of the 
seven. What we need to purify and in- 
vigorate our Christian lives is a Sunday 
marked by a different kind of reading, con- 
versation and by a different atmosphere. 
Most people have to spend the waking 
hours from Monday morning to Satur- 
day night in facing and solving the prob- 
lem of daily bread. When God ordained 
one day out of seven for a special pur- 
pose he knew how weighed down the 
great majority of mankind would be 
with earthly interests. And to a certain 
extent, by changing our clothing, by 
altering our diet, we all recognize that 
Sunday is a different day. But the real 
difference ought to come in the direction 
which our thoughts take, in the general 
tone and atmosphere of the home. Jesus 
and Paul took issue with the Pharisees 
on the Sunday question because the 
76 



Day 



HELPS BY THE WAY 

difference which they made between The 
Sunday and week-days was one of ex- *£rd s 
ternals only. They were no more open 
to God, they were no more just and 
merciful on the Sabbath than on Mon- 
day and Tuesday. They were just as 
crafty, domineering and hypocritical. 
Let us change the current of our thinking 
and of our desires if we would keep Sun- 
day rightly. 

It ought also to be a divine day. 
Three elements — rest, worship and serv- 
ice — combine to secure this. How 
to proportion them is the problem for 
the individual, but make sure that you 
are getting the real things and not any 
substitutes for them. As respects wor- 
ship, for instance, do not delude yourself 
by thinking that you are drawing near 
to God merely because you are lying 
prone in a field of daisies or idly holding 
a rod over a running stream. The ap- 
proved method through all the centuries 
for finding and worshiping God has been 
to seek him in his sanctuary. There is 
where most men are filled with a sense 
of God's greatness and nearness. There 

77 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

The is where they bow upon their knees and 
Lord's as k him to have mercy upon them, con- 
^ trite sinners. Perhaps you are different 
from most of your kind, and then again 
perhaps you are not. Another common 
mistake is to substitute sociability for the 
kind of service of needy men and women 
which the Bible enjoins upon the Sab- 
bath Day. It might be better for us to 
decline an invitation to dine with con- 
genial friends on the Lord's Day, and 
spend the time that would be consumed 
thereby in visiting the poor and the sick. 
As another has said : " The only liberty 
which Christ permits on Sunday is the 
liberty to do good and to grow better 
yourself." Make the day different, make 
it divine by longer prayers, more atten- 
tive reading of the Bible and of the 
books that feed the spiritual life and by 
ministering to those who need your help, 
and your Sunday is sure to be full of 
profit. 

The Apparently Jesus did not care much 
Lord's for forms. He saw too much formalism 
Supper a |3 0u t hj mj too many whited sepulchers, 

78 



HELPS BY THE WAY 

too many institutions of religion out of The 
which had gone the faith and hope and Lord's 
love which constitute the eternal ele- u ^ er 
ments of religion. He never gave his 
disciples any formula through which 
they should invariably express their faith 
in him. He seemed to prefer to trust to 
that phrasing of it which would be the 
natural outcome of the divine life which 
he implanted. He only prescribed one 
form of prayer, and that was in response 
to their request for it. So when he does 
institute a certain definite outward action 
and bids his followers observe it for his 
sake it possesses all the greater signifi- 
cance. 

The Christian man, then, must needs 
ask himself if the Lord's Supper means 
as much to him as his Lord intended it 
should. If a dying friend says : " Now 
no matter about going to my grave in 
the cemetery, no matter about a notice 
in the newspapers, no matter about put- 
ting on crape, but the next time you are 
in those quiet woods where we used to 
walk together I want you particularly to 
remember me, or every Sunday evening 

79 



Supper 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

The in your room just at sunset call my face 
Lord's to mind," we should be very sure to 
heed his wishes. Jesus knew that we 
needed some special season, some defi- 
nite place, some concrete act in con- 
nection with which we should specially 
remember him. Not that we forget him 
elsewhere, but none of us are so spiritual 
yet that we can dispense with times and 
ways of particular and more tender com- 
memoration. 

Certainly the associations that gather 
about the table of our Lord ought them- 
selves to bring spiritual quickening. 
Those emblems there are the definite 
material proof that Christ was once in 
the world. We need no better evidence 
of the reality of Christianity than the 
persistence of this rite through nineteen 
hundred years. And it has gathered into 
itself the penitence and the consecration, 
the toils and the sacrifices of countless 
multitudes who, in stately cathedrals or 
in plain Puritan meeting-houses, in the 
catacombs and the mountain fastnesses 
whither the rage of their persecutors had 
driven them, or in great gatherings which 
80 



H EL PS BY THE WAY 

commanded the world's attention and The 
respect, have partaken of the bread and Lord's 
the wine that spoke of forgiveness and u ^ er 
peace. Surely some sense of what this 
supper has meant to the Christian world 
should steal into our hearts as we sit at 
the same table of the Lord. 

But we gather there chiefly to remem- 
ber him. Some there are who are made 
fearful by the words of the apostle with 
reference to eating and drinking un- 
worthily, and to them the communion 
hour is one of mourning over their sins. 
Contrition there should be, but it is our 
Saviour rather than our own stained and 
marred selves of whom we should think. 
Others dwell upon the shortcomings and 
inconsistencies of their fellow Christians, 
but it is not in remembrance of other 
people's sins that we are to partake of 
the supper. He who bore them and 
ours, too, in his own body on the tree, 
whose compassion is wide enough and 
whose power great enough to redeem a 
universe, should be the chief object of 
thought and devotion as we linger about 
the table which bears his name. 

81 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Giving It is singular how loath we Christians 
are to trust the working of a spiritual 
law. We order our lives in sure reliance 
upon physical law. We are confident 
that if we plant the seed and keep the 
weeds away the sunshine and the rain will 
bring it to maturity. But we shrink 
from testing the law found on so many 
pages of the Bible, to the effect that 
one's growth and usefulness depend 
upon the policy of liberality. " The 
liberal soul shall be made fat," declares 
the Old Testament. Jesus echoes the as- 
sertion more than once in such sentences 
as these : " Give, and it shall be given 
unto you." " Whosoever shall lose his 
life shall find it." I like that old illustra- 
tion of the way in which it is possible to 
retain a portion of grain. Just as soon 
as one clenches his fist the shining meal 
escapes through every crevice, but pour 
it on the open palm and it remains 
there. You cannot in the long run hold 
anything simply by hanging on to it. 
You must be willing to put it out in the 
open where it can be available to others 
as well as to yourself. 
82 



HELPS BY THE WAY 

As respects dollars and cents this law Giving 
holds. In the long run men are pros- 
pered according to their willingness to 
share their returns from business. If we 
could get at the exact statistics, I think 
we should find that Christian people who 
have some definite convictions about de- 
voting a portion of their income to the 
needs of the kingdom of heaven register 
as large a measure of outward success as 
do their neighbors whose contributions 
to charity consist in dimes and pennies 
tossed to the beggar by the wayside. 
Within a short while several striking 
instances have come to me of men re- 
markably prospered in business who 
have made it their rule for many years 
to give a tithe of their income to the 
church and to philanthropy. They be- 
gan this practice when it was hard for 
them to spare that amount from small 
salaries, but they persevered then and 
God has brought them to the point 
where they can easily give more than a 
tithe. 

But no one, at any rate, can gainsay 
the spiritual returns from a liberal policy. 

83 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Giving Nothing after all develops the finer 
qualities so much as to give to another 
of that which represents toil and sacri- 
fice. It seems as if the noblest instincts 
of our hearts demand some such outlet 
quite as much for our own sake as for 
the sake of those to whom our offering 
goes. When a little child labors hour 
after hour just before Christmas to make 
something for father and then succeeds 
only in presenting him with a pin- 
cushion in which the clumsy stitches are 
evident, he values it more than the most 
expensive gift, and the child itself has 
taken a distinct step forward. Into its 
own heart have come impulses of love 
and tenderness never before cherished. 
We may dare even to apply this prin- 
ciple to God himself. The demands of 
his own nature require that he should 
give his Son. He could not be a re- 
deeming Father of mankind until he had 
furnished a crowning proof of his love. 

Is not this the key to many of our 
problems? If we could only take this 
simple law and trust it, our doubts and 
questioning would disappear, our cold- 
84 



HELPS BY THE WAY 

ness and apathy would give way to a Giving 
genuine interest in men, to a real sense 
of fellowship with God. You confess 
sadly that you have no interest in 
missions. How much money have you 
invested in them within the last year? 
Put twenty dollars into the training of an 
Indian orphan, or send ten dollars for a 
college in distant China ; connect your- 
self personally with some worker in 
Turkey or Africa ; deny yourself some 
luxury in order to help equip that 
worker — and see if you do not have a 
deeper interest in missions. The early 
Christians to whom Paul wrote believed 
in this law and practiced it, and that 
is why there was such a sturdy type 
of Christianity in the first century. Our 
converts on missionary soil to-day, who 
more nearly resemble in their giving the 
widow whom Jesus commended than do 
most Christians in America, show in 
their own strong and daring lives the re- 
active influence of that same law. It is 
forever true, as another has well said, 
that the secret of success is to be lavish 
of one's personality. 

85 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

The Prayer, the Bible, the church, the 
Helpful L or d's Day, the Lord's Supper, the liberal 
f* hand, — these are the substantial and en- 
Life during helps as we step toward Christ. 
But the wayfarer will not wall himself off 
from other sources of invigoration. His 
Creator has so fitted out this universe, so 
ordered the play of life upon life that as 
we tread the way of righteousness many a 
benign influence may steal into our hearts. 
The beauty of a summer day, the glory of 
a winter landscape, the serene and stately 
onmoving of the universe — breed in us 
peace and strength. Our daily tasks, 
whose grip upon us is so relentless and 
sometimes so wearying, may after all 
prove one of the chief agencies for put- 
ting granite into our characters. Whole- 
some books, beautiful pictures, statuary 
and music minister to every fluttering 
aspiration after truth and goodness. The 
warm and delicate hand of human friend- 
ship leads us forth upon high places 
whence we see our lives as they are meant 
to be. The family relationship, while it 
imposes restraints and obligations, strikes 
at the beast and the demon in us and 
86 



HELPS BY THE WAY 

challenges us to every-day heroism and The 
saintship. Helpful 

Thus for the obedient, high-minded J 
and purposeful man the path Christward Life 
is safeguarded and illumined during every 
stage of the journey. 



87 



THE WATMARKS 



First the blade, then the ear, 
Then the full corn in the ear. 

— Jesus. 

Heaven is not reached at a single bound ; 
But we build the ladder by which we rise 
From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies, 

And we mount to its summit round by round. 
—John Gilbert Holland. 

Do not seek to change the order of God's spiritual 
year. Do not seek to put the fruits of one season 
into " the lap " of another. — George Matheson. 

There is no better means of progress in the spirit- 
ual life than to be continually beginning afresh and 
never to think that we have done enough. — Francis 
De Sales. 



IF 

THE WATMARKS 

Did you ever on a Saturday night or The 
a Sunday morning look back over the Worth 
vanished week with a view to determin- Q ur 
ing the worth of each day to you ? Why Days 
not make the effort some time to mark 
them on the scale of ioo? If you mark 
one seventy-five and the other ninety, on 
what ground would you make the differ- 
ence ? Perhaps some great and unusual 
pleasure is associated with Monday or 
Wednesday; perhaps on Friday you 
passed an excellent examination in one 
of your studies ; perhaps Sunday brought 
you a new sense of the goodness of God 
and the love of Christ ; perhaps on Thurs- 
day you recall going out of your way to 
help some one else. At all events, our 
fleeting days will lend themselves to such 
marking, and if we are true disciples of 
Jesus we shall find ourselves more and 

91 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

The more prone to rank high on the scale 

Worth those days when we have been conscious 

°* of some growth of character, some real 

D a y S usefulness in the world. It would be a 

shame to mark a day ioo simply because 

from sunrise to sunset our own cup of 

happiness had been full and we had no 

regard as to whether those about us 

might or might not be weary or sad. 

In some such way we number our 
years. Mr. Joseph Cook, not long be- 
fore his death, characterized human dec- 
ades in this striking fashion : " Man's 
life means tender teens, teachable twen- 
ties, tireless thirties, fiery forties, forcible 
fifties, serious sixties, sacred seventies, 
aching eighties." Of course no one ad- 
jective can sum up ail the characteris- 
tics of ten years, but we are reminded 
that our lives do move on from period 
to period, and that each decade may wit- 
ness some addition to our working equip- 
ment, some tighter grasp of the problems 
set us to solve, a larger influence in behalf 
of things true and beautiful and of good 
report. 

The only glory that can rest upon 
92 



THE WAYMARKS 

these human years arises from the fact The 
that we frail and transient creatures of Worth 
the dust may rest in the mighty embrace °-L 
of the Eternal, may link our weakness j) a y S 
with his strength, our short-sightedness 
with his foreknowledge, our fleeting 
threescore years and ten with that life 
which knows no beginning and no end. 
Only as we realize that God is the back- 
ground of our existence does it seem 
worth while even to breathe, and over 
against that background how puerile 
seem our petty rivalries, our selfish am- 
bitions, our absorption in material things ! 

God's judgments are not man's judg- The 
ments, and as at the end of a year we Backward 

T h 

cast our eyes back it may be that God 
takes note of things in our pathway 
which to us seem apparently trivial. 
His interest in the record is not unlike 
that of a Christian mother who keeps in- 
formed about the progress of her boy 
away at school. He writes that he is on 
the football team, that he is president of 
his class, that he has taken a prize for 
declamation, that he is among the first 

93 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

The six scholars of his class. Such tidings 
Backward re joice her heart, but if she is keeping a 
private book wherein she has recorded 
the notable things in his life since the 
unspeakable moment when he was first 
placed in her arms, what will give her 
the most satisfaction to write down? 
Surely what he told her about his decid- 
ing to be a Christian, about his effort to 
promote a higher standard of honor in 
the classroom and on the playground. 

So God's eye, as it scans our record, 
rests with loving approbation on things 
which mark us as disciples of his Son — 
that day when we met and conquered a 
great temptation, those times when we 
were unselfish and loving when it would 
have been far more natural and easy to 
be the opposite, the hand which we 
stretched out one day to a weaker 
brother, the good cheer which radiated 
from us when the clouds were settling 
upon us and those about us. 

The Does it pay to spend a great deal of 
Fresh strength and time in bemoaning the 
past ? Gordon of Khartum used to say 
94 



THE WAYMARKS 

that he regarded past events not as his- The 
tory but as providence. We need for *i 
our comfort and relief the power to rise 
above the depression and heartburning 
occasioned by a backward look, and to 
grasp the great Christian truth that all 
things, even slips and shortcomings, may 
somehow in the wonderful movements 
of God's providence work out his own 
blessed designs and be for our ultimate 
good. Let us never forget the inspiring 
words of the general who, when he met 
a detachment of his troops fleeing from 
the enemy, their captain crying out, 
" The battle is lost," rallied them and 
turned their faces again to the foe by 
saying, " This battle may be lost, but 
there is yet time to win another." 

The only way to make a new year 
better is to make ourselves better. Just 
in proportion as we become more de- 
voted to duty, more open to the truth, 
braver in asserting it, truer and more 
constant in our affections, purer and 
more unselfish in daily living shall we be 
conferring upon the passing days a value 
and a glory which will make them worth 

95 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

The living in the experience and worth re- 
Fresh membering hereafter. And the time to 
begin is now ! A year slips away from 
us before we are aware of its flight. The 
difference between most of us and Jesus 
Christ is that he never postponed until 
next year or next week the thing he 
ought to do. We are continually de- 
luding ourselves with the notion that 
pretty soon we will begin to carry out 
our high impulses; that day after to- 
morrow, perhaps, we will attack that bad 
habit ; but any year will be a good year 
to us only as we strive to make January 
first and January second, and all the 
successive three hundred and sixty- 
three days, just as good as we can, by 
beautifying our own characters and by 
brightening the lot of those about us. 

Signs If we examine ourselves to discover 

°f tokens of growth, we ought not to look 

rogress Qn ^ ^ or conven ti ona l s jg ns Q f progress. 

Every sincere soul may fairly take com- 
fort to himself from every proper sign 
of advance, even though he may have 
been trained to exact of himself certain 
96 



THE WAYMARKS 

prescribed feelings. A man is growing Signs 
spiritually if he is growing morally, °f 
if he finds an increasing hatred in his ro & ress 
heart of sham and cant, if his eth- 
ical standard for himself and others is 
constantly advancing, if he loves justice 
and • does mercy, and tries to walk 
humbly before his God from day to day. 
Moreover, one of the truest tokens of 
growth is discontent with present attain- 
ments. If that be absent, it is a ques- 
tion whether one is growing at all. 

When a great edifice is being erected 
the sound of hammer and saw is loudly 
heard ; but when nature weaves her 
carpet of green for the fields, sends the 
sap coursing through trunk and bough 
and impels the flowers to send up their 
fragile stems through the dark earth the 
wondrous transformations do not adver- 
tise themselves to the ear. So the 
Christian grows. A man who is living 
near to his Lord, entering more fully 
each day into his spirit of service and 
sacrifice, taking on more of his likeness, 
does not need to bluster or brag about 
it ; nay, he shrinks from any proclama- 

97 



STEPS CHRIST WARD 

Signs tion of his bettering state. But little by 
°f little his friends become aware of it, in 
the gentler tones of his voice, in his 
softer judgments of his fellows, in his 
deepening humility of spirit, in his 
mastery of his passions and his mean- 
nesses. 

The growth is orderly; it is not 
spasmodic; it is not aimless. There is 
the logical, progressive unfolding of the 
new life. We have seen some sad cases 
of men who followed Jesus on the hop, 
skip and jump principle. But the life 
that is really keyed to his is steady and 
moves evenly and quietly to a distant 
goal. It does not make so much differ- 
ence if the progress is slow. Dr. A. B. 
Bruce says in his helpful volume, The 
Moral Order of the World, " The one 
valid distinction between men is one of 
tendency and momentum." Only let us 
make sure that there is some movement. 

Holding Sometimes simply to hold one's ground 

On i s to make progress. The man rowing 

against the current deserves some praise 

for not letting his boat go down the 



THE WAYMARKS 

stream. The reformed drunkard does Holding 
well if he simply holds on, even if he 0n 
does not develop all the Christian graces 
at once. Some one asked Sieyes just 
after the Reign of Terror what he did 
during that stormy period. His simple 
answer was, " I lived." Just to live out 
a single day firmly, uncomplainingly, 
may be all that is sometimes required of 
us. 

This is an age of transition, and it is 
difficult to adjust the truths we learned 
in childhood to the new discoveries of 
science and of Biblical studies, but shame 
on the man who, because his knowledge 
increases and widens, surrenders his 
faith ! Learn Principal Shairp's beauti- 
ful poem of two stanzas, beginning : 

I have a life in Christ to live, 

And ere I live it must I wait 
Till science shall full answer give 

Of this or that book's date ? 

The Son of man still finds faith on the 
earth, despite the fact that creeds made a 
century ago or fifteen centuries ago do 
not adequately express our own convic- 
tions. Genuine, vital, animating faith is 

s L.ofC** " 



STEPS C.HRISTWARD 

Holding as possible to-day as it ever was ; nay, 
® n even more so to the reverent, serious, 
teachable soul. Hold on to what you 
have, and it will gather to itself more. 

We ought to hold on, too, to courage. 
There are problems enough, personal 
and social, there are lions in the way, but 
" why should the children of the King 
go mourning all their days ? " We ought 
to present a brave front to the world. 
Courage, too, grows by being exercised. 
When we come to the narrow places 
and our foes seem hemming us in, let us 
spur us on to battle by the thought of 
the forces on our side. 

No one has any business to let go his 
grip on duty. It is in this region of life 
that endurance tells most. I was im- 
pressed once with the reply which Dr. 
Sheldon made to a question regarding 
his attitude toward his critics. " Oh," 
said he, as if it were a most trivial matter, 
" I go right along." A great point has 
been scored when we can learn to go 
right along with our work, sticking to 
the duty that is hard or disagreeable, 
carrying it through to the end. 
100 



THE WAYMARKS 

The natural heart craves signs and Inward 
wonders. So a multitude of artificial -Assurance 
tests of personal salvation has grown 
up. Christians have demanded of them- 
selves much more than Jesus Christ ever 
demanded of them. Some mystical in- 
ward witness has been sought, some 
mighty attestation of the Spirit to the 
fact that they were accepted children of 
God. Some of the sweetest, purest souls 
this world has ever known have subjected 
themselves to seasons of introspection 
and self-discipline that have frequently 
ended in gloom and despair. We of this 
generation, to whom such words of de- 
spondency and self-upbraiding seldom 
come, do not begin to realize how 
other generations of Christians have 
faced it with quivering personal anx- 
iety. What would they not have given 
to receive the assurance that they were 
safe as respects this life and partic- 
ularly as respects that which is to 
come? 

The inquiry might have been justifia- 
ble if it had confined itself to a few sim- 
ple Biblical tests. John, for instance, 

101 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Inward says, " We know that we have passed 
Assurance out of death into life, because we love 
the brethren," " He that saith he abideth 
in him ought himself also to walk even 
as he walked." It is not a question of 
ecstatic feeling, or of enjoyment of 
prayer, or of utter indifference to earthly 
things, but it is a question primarily of 
love. A man knows whether or not he 
is trying to live in the atmosphere of the 
thirteenth chapter of first Corinthians 
and to walk along the pathway outlined 
by the Sermon on the Mount. A saved 
man is a loving man. The love begins 
with the circle of those for whom he is 
most responsible and with whom he is 
most constantly thrown and them he 
tries to love to the best of his ability. 
Then his sympathy widens to those in 
the neighborhood, the community, the 
nation, the world. So if genuine, im- 
pulsive love is welling up in his heart he 
will not be likely to trouble himself with 
this question, or if he does the answer 
will be ready at hand. 

There are practical tests, too. Bishop 
Hannington, when a young man, said 
102 



THE WAYMARKS 

that one reason why he thought he was Inward 
a Christian was that he liked to go to Assurance 
prayer-meeting better than he used to. 
This is by no means a conclusive evi- 
dence of salvation, or the absence of the 
fondness any sure sign of moral degen- 
eracy. It depends upon the prayer- 
meeting. But it is one of several prac- 
tical tests. Does a man like the company 
of Christian people, does he like to hear 
about the progress of the kingdom of 
God, does he yearn for peace in the in- 
dustrial world, does he have a growing 
disposition to perform the simple routine 
acts of every-day helpfulness ? 

We would not bring back the days of 
our fathers, when the demands of a harsh 
theology made men morbid, but we are 
foolish when we go to the other extreme 
and forget that we have a soul to save. 
Horace Bushnell once said to a young 
woman in the most natural way imagina- 
ble, " Have you found your place ? " 
We should ask ourselves, now and then, 
if we have found our place in God's uni- 
verse, if we are cooperating with his laws 
and seeking above everything else to 

103 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

glorify him. A man may know whether 
or not he is in his proper place, and he 
may have the joy and peace arising from 
this consciousness. 

To-day Where am I going to-day ? To my 

^'^Znd W ° rk ' ° f COUrSe > first ° f all > and to d ° lt 
q-fr en better, if possible, than yesterday. But, 

What before I go to it, is there not one other 

spot to which I should resort, there 

to gird myself for the struggles and 

responsibilities of the day? The great 

preacher Chalmers used to express the 

fear that he would be " bustled out of 

his spirituality." Any one whose life is 

beset with many cares is in danger of 

this misfortune. Let me forfend it then 

this day, if possible. And then, as I go 

to my work, and after I get there, may 

there not be some other path of quiet 

service which I can and ought to tread ? 

Is there any home of a poor man, any 

shop or factory where oaths and bad 

talk befoul the air into which I may go 

this day carrying the fresh ozone of the 

Christ life ? 

Where am I going to-morrow, and 

104 



THE WAYMARKS 

during all the to-morrows of my earthly To-day 
life? What single purpose have I in To-morrozv 
view ? " Rome was not built in a day." q-^ en 
The great books and the great paintings What 
are not the outcome of a momentary 
impulse that led their makers to toil 
fiercely for a day or two. These won- 
derful achievements represent the steady, 
patient labor of many years, or even of a 
lifetime, and from the start these work- 
ers kept their goal in sight. Paul be- 
longed to this company of purposeful 
souls. He took the long look into the 
future and then set his teeth firmly and 
said : " This one thing I do." We 
cannot, it is true, entirely settle in our 
youthful days, or even in maturer life, 
just where we shall go when the immedi- 
ate task is done, when we are through 
with this school, when we shall have 
served our time here and there. But 
it pays the growing boy to ask himself 
now and then, " At what am I aiming in 
life?" 

Where am I going, not to-day or 
to-morrow, perhaps, but by and by when 
I die? I know not just how much I 

105 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

To-day shall be able to travel over this beautiful 
To-morrow worldj but of one thing j am certa i n . 

q-j im in due time I shall have to take alone 
What that journey from which no mortal has 
ever returned. Shall I when I come 
down to that dark river be able to say, 
as Frances Willard did, " How beautiful 
God is " ? And how about my destina- 
tion after I have quitted these earthly 
scenes ? I shall go somewhere when 
I die. Religious people talk about a 
place called heaven and another called 
hell, and while I cannot understand all 
that some affirm about these places or 
states I really do not think that I shall 
go to heaven until I am in some measure 
fit to associate with those pure and un- 
selfish souls who have washed their robes 
and made them white. If I live like 
a brute here, or even if I do not live like 
a brute but live quite decently, and yet 
am utterly oblivious of the life and 
sacrifice of Jesus Christ and of the love 
of God to which they bore witness, then 
I will not be so presumptuous as to 
expect God to take me to his heaven in 
spite of myself. I once met a man, 
106 



THE WAYMARKS 

a very respectable business man, who To-day 
was honest enough to tell me that he be- To-morrow 
lieved that if he should die that night he y» 
would go to hell. A man is a coward What 
who professes religion in the hope that 
he may escape hell. On the other hand 
a man is a fool who ignores the here- 
after, who never asks himself this great 
question, " Where am I going when 
I die ? " 



107 



THE REWARDS 



O wealth of life beyond all bound, 
Eternity each moment given ! 

— David Wasson. 

If there be joy in the world, surely a man of pure 
heart possesseth it. — Thomas a Kempis. 

Very great is the peace of obedience. When a man 
has his lot fixed and his mind made up and his des- 
tiny before him, and he quietly acquiesces in that, 
his spirit is at rest.— F. W. Robertson. 

I have been thinking much lately of the Lord's 
loving kindness in giving us so many wayside enjoy- 
ments and so much present reward in all our work 
for him. . . . For over and above the great gifts, 
the blessed hope set before us and the quiet peace 
with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, what num- 
bers of bits and drops of pleasure and delight one 
gets which simply would not exist for us if we were 
not his children ! — Frances R. Havergal. 

In the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while sev- 
eral persons are at the same time calling for different 
things, I possess God in as great tranquillity as if I 
were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament. — 
Brother Lawrence. 



THE REWARDS 

There is a famous picture of Holman Joy 
Hunt's illustrating the words, " Behold, I 
stand at the door and knock," and repre- 
senting the Saviour as a pleading sup- 
pliant for admission. That is one great 
aspect of our religion, but I like to 
match it with the thought of Christ as a 
King, distributing royal bounties. This 
was in Paul's mind when he penned 
those glowing words, " All are yours," 
and in John's when he wanted others to 
share what he had seen and heard and 
felt, to the end that his own joy and 
theirs might be fulfilled* Religion does 
not always go through the world as 
a beggar. It has its splendors and its 
exceeding great rewards. In the beauti- 
ful, richly furnished mansion which 
stands on yonder hill the feast is spread. 
There is an abundance of everything 

111 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Joy that may delight the heart of man. 
" Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye 
to the waters." 

God meant man to be happy. To 
that end he arched the heavens above 
him and spread out the smiling earth be- 
fore him and charged the air with sun- 
shine and ozone and gave to the robin 
his song and tinted the eye of the violet. 
As you go out into the open on a morn- 
ing when the thrill of the springtime 
makes every nerve quiver with delight, 
you pour out your appreciation in Long- 
fellow's language and say : 

O gift of God, O perfect day, 
Wherein no man shall work, but play, 
Wherein it is enough for me 
Not to be doing, but to be. 

Human relations, too, are so ordered 
by our heavenly Father as to be the 
source of measureless joy. Despite all 
the friction and misunderstanding that 
arise between man and man, an immense 
amount of pleasure and profit is derived 
from association with others. Life would 
be insipid indeed if we did not have the 
112 



THE REWARDS 

cheer and tonic of our family, school and Joy 
business companionships. The solitary 
man is likely to be a gloomy man. 

If, then, notwithstanding all the misery 
of the world) happiness is man's natural 
portion, it ought not to be thought that 
religion lacks this element of joy. It 
would be contrary to all the movement 
of life if after a boy or girl has exulted 
in the fresh winds of heaven and frolicked 
with his mates and tasted a hundred in- 
nocent delights he or she should at the 
moment of becoming a Christian put on 
a long face and carry about ever after- 
ward an atmosphere of gloom. Not 
unto such a service does God call any 
hopeful, ambitious youth. The nature 
of his kingdom is often misunderstood. 
There is the sacrificial element, to be 
sure, but it is self first of all and forever 
that we are to renounce, not the whole- 
some joys of God's good world. The 
Christian's pleasures are the pleasures 
which belong to the world's life so far 
as these are innocent and wholesome. 
He will exercise wisdom in the choice of 
them, and self-control in the use of them, 

113 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Joy but no one has a better right to a " good 
time " than he. He may relish just as 
keenly a glass of soda water or a trip to 
Europe as the man who never thinks of 
Jesus Christ or tries to follow him. This 
is our Father's world, and he has fitted it 
up with many things to minister to our 
physical and esthetic senses. We can 
have access to any and all of them so 
long as indulgence does not compromise 
our Christian principles or dull our 
spiritual vision. 

But the Christian has certain pleasures 
about which the world knows little or 
nothing. They divide themselves into 
two classes. First, those arising from the 
service of others. To be sure one does 
not need to be a Christian in order to be 
kind and helpful, and we bless God that 
to-day so many Christlike deeds are per- 
formed by those who do not own that 
they are disciples of the Master. But 
the enduring motive for such service of 
our fellows lies in the remembrance of 
Him who though he was rich yet for our 
sake became poor, and every form of 
ministration to others which stops short 
114 



THE REWARDS 

of a regard for their spiritual needs fails, Joy 
by just so much, of being the noblest 
service. Pleasant as is the sense of hav- 
ing furnished coal and bread to the 
needy, one does not taste the keenest 
joy until the spiritual part of him has 
gone out in sympathy and help to a 
fellow man. 

The other class of pleasures belongs to 
the inner life. There is such a thing as 
Christian experience. Not the mystics 
alone, absorbed in devotion, have felt the 
thrill of a holy rapture, but plain, hard- 
working men and women in the midst 
of life's battles have over and again felt 
the exquisite joy of communion with 
God. We do not have to wait until we 
reach the heavenly life to know the re- 
ality and blessedness of such experi- 
ences : 

The hill of Zion yields 
♦ A thousand sacred sweets, 
Before we reach the heavenly fields, 
Or walk the golden streets. 

But only one key unlocks this door of 
joy. The service must be unselfish and 
complete. What joy does the soldier 

115 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Joy find who has no enthusiasm for the cam- 
paign, who does not trust his commander, 
who would desert if he got a chance, 
who shirks his assignments, who goes to 
sleep on picket duty, whose heart never 
responds to the call to make a desperate 
charge, to sustain a forlorn hope ? If we 
serve God bravely and well, he will see 
to it that our cup of joy is kept con- 
stantly full. 

Peace " Why are your Christian missionaries 
forever talking about peace ? " said a 
Hindu teacher to one of my college 
mates in India not long ago, " and you 
not only talk about it but seem to be 
able to realize it too." Thus did a dev- 
otee of another religion pay tribute to 
one of the distinctive qualities of Chris- 
tianity, and at the same time tacitly 
admit that his own faith was unable to 
produce anything like the Christian's 
peace. 

Is this all a delusion ? Have men and 
women for nineteen centuries been the 
victims of a vivid imagination ? Have 
they calmly endured martyrdom, or have 

116 



THE REWARDS 

they carried bravely and uncomplainingly Peace 
the routine tasks and burdens of every 
day, which in some cases are the equiva- 
lent of martyrdom, sustained by a trust 
which had no basis in reality ? I do not 
believe it. There is such a thing as 
Christian experience, as real to the man 
who passes through it as the explorer's 
joy at discovering a new continent is to 
him, or as the scientist's satisfaction in 
penetrating a little farther the secrets of 
this universe. 

It would be all a delusion if peace were 
a product of our own manufacture. The 
only guaranty of peace arises from sur- 
render to the divine power and love. By 
no process of self-realization, by no mere 
discipline of an untamed nature, by no 
strenuous and persistent endeavor alone, 
can a man secure the Christian's peace. 
It is God who must keep us in this 
peace. It is Christ who bestows his own 
peace upon us. On the one hand, he 
said to his disciples, was the world and 
its tribulations, on the other was himself 
and his peace. Their lives would be 
passed in both spheres. They would not 

117 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Peace escape the tribulation, but in Christ they 
would always have peace. 

There is no magic about this. Of 
course there is first the supreme surren- 
der of one's self to God. Man looks out 
upon the universe and decides that, all 
things considered, he will accept for him- 
self the Christian theory of its meaning 
and conform his life thereto. So we all 
go on from year to year, holding on to 
Christ because that trust seems to us the 
most sensible and rational course of 
action. But along with this trust is the 
constant effort to mold our life according 
to the ideals which he has put before us. 
It is impossible for him to bestow his 
peace upon a soul that is not seeking to 
be saturated with the spirit of Christ and 
to do the greater works which he said his 
followers would do. 

Hope Hope has never fled from the human 
family even in the most wretched periods 
of its history. Many a man on the brink 
of suicide even, has recoiled from the 
dark deed because of the fluttering of a 
vague hope in his heart. Such stirrings 
118 



THE REWARDS 

of soul are proof that all the children of Hope 
men are the children of God. But when 
the Christian hope takes hold of a man 
it seems so utterly different from what 
he has known before, so satisfying and 
so beautiful, that he seems to himself to 
have experienced a second birth, to have 
passed into a world in which all things 
have become new. 

This living hope, this Christian hope, 
this Easter hope is not based on a fond 
fancy that to-morrow is to be better than 
to-day, upon a willingness to gamble on 
the chances of life which we trust will 
soon put an end to our run of bad luck 
and clear our sky of clouds. The lively 
hope into which we are begotten again 
by the resurrection of Christ from the 
dead is grounded on what God has al- 
ready done for the world through our 
Lord's ministry to it and conquest of it. 
In him we see one who has upon him no 
mark of its defilement, whose mightiest 
forces — those of waste and decay and 
death — he has utterly vanquished. The 
vital and the vitalizing Jesus is our reser- 
voir of hope. So long as we see his 

119 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Hope majestic figure in the forefront of the 
fight we will not cease to believe that 
victory is coming also to us, provided 
we wield the sword of the Spirit with all 
our might. 

The Christian's hope is of countless 
worth in the presence of discouragement 
and depression. We need it when we 
face the poverty and the intermittent 
character of our own spiritual life. Our 
sins trouble us and they ought to trouble 
us, but they ought not to trouble us so 
much that we lose sight of the promise : 
" If, while we were enemies, we were rec- 
onciled to God through the death of his 
Son, much more, being reconciled, shall 
we be saved by his life." We may al- 
ways hope and expect that the power 
which has already wrought in us a par- 
tial salvation will bring its work to per- 
fection. Then again, we falter and grow 
faint-hearted in the presence of the woe 
of the world. It is so vast and it presses 
so continuously upon us. Wordsworth 
felt it when he wrote of 

The heavy and the weary weight 
Of all this unintelligible world. 
120 



THE REWARDS 

The injustices and the oppressions, the Hope 
crimes and the vices and the sufferings of 
the world would make cynics and pessi- 
mists of us did we not believe that Christ 
is the hope of the world, and that it is a 
vastly better world to-day because his 
spirit for so many years has been trans- 
forming individuals and reconstructing 
society. And he will surely accomplish 
that whereto he was sent. 

We often have to get one or two Guidance 
knock-down blows before we realize the 
desirability of a guiding force stronger 
and wiser that ourselves. In that little 
book, Ships than Pass in the Night, one 
of the characters is pictured thus : " She 
had come through a great fever into a 
great calm." Only those who have been 
tempest-tossed and buffeted by contrary 
winds, and who have outridden the 
impetuosity and wilfulness of youthful 
days, possess that serenity of soul which 
comes from surrender to the leadership 
of a higher power. It is one of the 
compensations of advancing years that 
as we grow riper the sense of God's 

121 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Guidance guidance becomes more clear. Professor 
Austin Phelps near the close of his life 
said that the one word which seemed to 
sum up his whole history more than any 
other was the single word " led." 

But even the flight of time and the 
hard knocks of life do not breed the 
sense of being led in those who never 
bow the knee to God or think about 
spiritual realities. We must turn the 
eye inward away from petty and sordid 
things. We must find and foster the 
spiritual qualities that are a part of our 
birthright in order to discover any plan 
for our lives and any divine care and 
leadership. The reason why life is such 
a puzzle and tangle to so many persons 
is that they have never found the great 
Leader of life, the great interpreter of 
these human years. Life was a terribly 
mixed-up affair to the apostle Paul until 
he found Christ. Life is painfully empty 
and meaningless to thousands of our 
fellow creatures as the days succeed one 
another, but bring no sense of continuity 
or of any divine plan being worked out 
in their behalf. If you want to be led 
122 



THE REWARDS 

by God, you must go where God is and Guidance 
stay with him and obey him. 

Yes, says one, the leadership is plain 
enough when we saunter by quiet 
streams and in flowery meadows, but 
when the path grows rough and thorny, 
when it carries us straight down into the 
valley of the shadow of death, ah, then 
it is hard to believe that our Shepherd is 
by our side. In such seasons of doubt 
remember the time when as a little child 
you placed your hand in your father's or 
mother's. Happy as our recollections 
of childhood are, there were hours when 
we had to take our parents' word, to 
obey them when our preference was 
otherwise, to wait before we could see 
that all was coming out well with us. 
Ah, but they were after all blessed 
periods to us, for in the end we came to 
know and love our parents better, and as 
grown men and women we thank them 
that sometimes they led us in paths where 
our feet at first refused to go, and in 
which when we did walk it was with 
tear-stained faces and loud protestations. 

On the day that they crucified the Son 

123 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Guidance of man outside the city wall it looked 
to all the world as if God had forsaken 
his well-beloved Son. " He trusteth on 
God; let him deliver him." Yet the 
terrible day went by without any inter- 
vention from the skies. But now that 
for nineteen centuries Jesus Christ has 
been receiving the homage of mankind, 
and through his spirit has been lifting 
the nations, can we think that God for a 
single instant withdrew his care? At 
the very moment when we murmur and 
feel most desolate the love of God is 
flowing about us like the exhaustless 
sea. 

q-fo The Scotch have the expression " Far 
Presence ben," which they apply to a man who 
of God has gone far into the mysteries of Chris- 
tian thought and Christian life. Lachlan 
Campbell, the Highland mystic, whom 
Ian Maclaren portrays so vividly, was 
such a man. Paul, when he wrote his 
later letters, had penetrated far into the 
heart of Christianity. He who in earlier 
epistles had set forth with such force and 
such variety of illustration Christ's work 

124 



THE REWARDS 

for men then strove to make his converts The 
see the equal importance and value of Presence 
Christ's work in men. The new truth ^ ° 
was not meant to supersede the other 
but to supplement it, in order that relig- 
ion might be full-orbed. 

Paul's language is that of a mystic. 
It is as if an outside force had come in, 
to which he had abdicated his personal 
sovereignty. A verse in Galatians points 
to a blending of identities. He seems 
hardly to know who was in control, him- 
self or his Lord. Yet Paul is not so far 
away from the best modern philosophy. 
Every reverent philosopher and scientist 
to-day is reiterating the truth that God 
is in every part of his world, in the life- 
less stick as well as in the shining star. 
Why, then, should he not be in the finest 
product of his hand, even in man ? 

Yes, this indwelling Presence is uni- 
versal, but God is in man as he is not and 
cannot be in the block of wood. And 
he is in the Christian man as he is not 
and cannot be in the man who ignores 
the divine Presence. Given the response 
to God and the life blossoms out with 

125 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

The tokens of his indwelling as the trees in 
Presence ^ e spring are clothed with beauty and 
_ ° thus declare the glory of the immanent 
God. But when a man crowds his life 
full of business and pleasure and self- 
indulgence he is to all intents and pur- 
poses hermetically sealed against God. 
He can get in, for he is God, but he can- 
not become the inspiring power of the 
life. 

There are two moods when we need 
the comfort and incentive of the indwell- 
ing Presence. When we are impatient, 
fretful and discouraged, dissatisfied with 
our lives and our lot in life, with our 
achievements and our prospects, then to 
know that there is a calm, strong pres- 
ence " closer to us than breathing, nearer 
than hands and feet," is to be made 
steady and hopeful again. The little 
child may weary of its blocks, but in the 
same room sits the mother sewing or 
reading quietly. The child knows that 
she is resourceful and willing to help it. 
The very fact that she is within the same 
four walls is reassuring. Frederick Mau- 
rice was forever trying to teach himself 
126 



THE REWARDS 

and others the lessons that one's change- The 
able moods do not affect, in the slightest, P ™" n J e 
spiritual realities, that religion is not the ? 
product of one's fancies and emotions, 
but the response of the soul to a reality 
already and forever present there. So 
when the tide of faith ebbs God is still 
real and still the one unfailing source of 
spiritual life. 

The other mood obtains when we sink 
to lower levels and are tempted to base- 
ness and uncharitableness, revenge and 
cowardice. But how can we admit to 
our minds that foul imagination, how 
can we plan to get the better of our 
brother, how give away to passion and 
selfishness when the indwelling Presence 
is aware of every secret thought and mo- 
tive ? Honored with such a Guest, can 
we wrong or grieve him ? Helen Hunt's 
sweet poem, addressed to a human host, 
applies also to this divine being : 

'Twere like a breach 

Of reverence in a temple, could I dare 

Here speak untruth, here wrong my inmost thought. 

Here I grow strong and pure ; here I may yield 

Without shamefacedness the little brought 

127 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

From out my poor life and stand revealed 
And glad and trusting in the sweet and rare 
And tender presence which hath filled this air. 

The And why may not a man stepping 

Graces Christward take a proper satisfaction in 

% ? f those elements of strength and worth 
Spirit & 

which little by little are added to his 

nature and come to be assets of his 
character just as much as machinery and 
warehouses are assets of his business? 
Peace and joy, hope and divine leader- 
ship — these are the fundamental rewards 
of the Christian life, but, besides them, a 
man acquires also, slowly but surely, 
other definite virtues and graces. They 
are the natural out-flowering of the inner 
life of peace and hope and joy. Hu- 
mility comes and lodges with a man — 
not the false humility which sings, " Oh, 
to be nothing, nothing," but still seeks 
the chief seats in the synagogues and 
craves honors at the hands of others, but 
genuine humility divested of every trait 
of conceit and self-sufficiency, and grow- 
ing out of complete surrender to the pur- 
poses of God. Gentleness and meekness 
blossom forth. Pagan religions neither 
128 



THE REWARDS 

commend nor produce such qualities. The 

The Christian also acquires in time a Graces 

ir 4. of the 

purity, a courage, a self-mastery, a pa- Spirit 

tience, a fortitude, a tenderness, an all- 
embracing charity worth more to him 
than silver and gold. We may call them 
if we please the by-products of Chris- 
tianity or, to change the figure, the har- 
vestings of the pilgrimage as one moves 
on from stage to stage in the path 
Christward. Characters with granite in 
them, characters that stand serene and 
strong amid all the shocks of temptation, 
characters that have about them the 
savor of Jesus Christ, characters marked 
by beauty, symmetry and force are the 
sure portion and the exceeding great re- 
ward of the men who sincerely follow 
Jesus. 



129 



WAYSIDE MINISTRIES 



We are not angels, but we may 
Down in earth's corners kneel, 

And multiply sweet acts of love, 
And murmur what we feel. 

— Longfellow. 

The world waits to be loved. 

— Robert E. Speer. 

Not for an instant does Jesus stand bewildered 
between the vision of God and the need of man. — 
F. W. Gunsaulus. 

Hunger, thirst of body or spirit, strangerhood, 
nakedness, sickness, some kind of bondage or danger 
or distress, these are your opportunities. — F. D. 
Huntington. 

The humblest Christian worker who is really 
pained with the sins of men and rejoices in their 
salvation is feeling, in his degree, the very passion 
which bore the Saviour of the world through his 
sufferings and which has throbbed from eternity in 
the heart of God. — James Stalker. 



VI 
WAYSIDE MINISTRIES 

The final purpose for which Christ Our 
calls us into his discipleship is not what R ea ? 
we may gain from him but what we may Bustness 
do for him. When he said to his early 
disciples, " I will make you fishers of 
men," the promise must have sounded 
strangely to them. If he had declared 
that he would make them renowned for 
all time, or make them sharers of his 
throne in the coming kingdom, he would 
have extended an expectation that might 
well have kindled their ambition. But 
what use had they for men, even if they 
should catch them? What kind of a 
mission anyway was it to discharge 
which he was asking them to leave their 
nets and their homes ? 

But Jesus saw far, not alone into the 
future, but into the very genius of his 
kingdom. He wanted men then as he 

133 



STEPS CHRIST WARD 

Our wants men now, first that they may be 
, a . with him long enough to imbibe his 
spirit, and then that they may go forth 
teaching, healing, saving the world. 
Would that the thousands among us who 
think Christianity means simply mem- 
bership in an orthodox church, and who 
have little idea of its real nature and 
scope, would hear and heed this first 
great promise, " I will make you fishers 
of men." 

Zeal is kindled by an appreciation of 
the need of the world. When we move 
out of our habitual and comfortable 
spheres and see something of the sorrow 
and woe of others, the desire stirs within 
us to do something in the way of relief 
and rescue. No man can be lukewarm 
— at least no Christian man can — who 
walks up and down the highways and 
lanes of this world with open eyes and 
a responsive heart. The other great 
kindler of zeal is the cross of Christ — 
not the painted crucifix, not any single 
theory about the atonement, but the 
actual outpouring of the life of the Son 
of God in behalf of men. When we fully 
134 



WAYSIDE MINISTRIES 

realize what that transaction meant out- Our 
side the city wall nineteen hundred years ^ ea { 
ago — not in its external aspect merely, 
but in what it signifies touching the 
eternal principle of sacrifice — then we 
grow tender and loving and become 
sharers of the passion of our Lord. 

" Go in anywhere — there is good fight- 
ing all along the line ! " said the com- 
manding officer to a subordinate, who 
dashed up with his battalion and asked 
where he should locate his troops. Any 
idler or loafer in the kingdom of God 
who is at last roused from his sloth, or 
who desires to cease criticizing others 
and to find his own place in the vineyard 
will not have to look far to discover it. 
Has he money ? A dozen needy and 
worthy causes are stretching out implor- 
ing hands. Has he time? Some neg- 
lected boy or girl will cross his path be- 
fore sundown to whom he may give 
something better than money. Has he 
brains? No Sunday-school has a full 
quota of competent teachers, no charita- 
ble or philanthropic enterprise has a 
plethora of valuable helpers. 

135 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Our The cobbler, William Carey, as he 
Real s titched away at his bench, fed his life 
with God and his missionary impulses 
by frequently looking up at a large map 
of the world, on which was roughly 
sketched the condition of heathendom. 
It is an interesting fact that the tales of 
Captain Cook's voyage round the world 
were also serviceable in broadening 
Carey's vision and bringing him to the 
point of consecration to the foreign field. 
We might easily be quickened if we 
would use the simple, natural sources of 
life and power within our daily reach. 
Read carefully, for instance, the story of 
present day activities in any single im- 
portant mission station in the world, and 
see if it does not kindle your zeal and 
make you want to have some sort of 
a share in it. 

Ability Somewhere back in an early Latin 
Imposes text-book we remember the sentence: 
* bility " They are able because they think they 
are able." I went one day into a class- 
mate's room and saw in conspicuous let- 
ters a little card in his handwriting, on 
136 



WAYSIDE MINISTRIES 

which were Kant's famous words : " I Ability 
can because I ought." It was his way I™P oses 
of reminding himself every day that the ^f 
simple fact that he was called upon to do 
certain things qualified him to accom- 
plish them. Every one has more ability 
than he puts to use ; even those who 
mourn because they have no talent at all 
probably have at least two or three done 
up in napkins or buried in the ground. 
Tremendous power resides in the money 
kings of the world, in the social leaders, 
in the great inventors and discoverers, 
but in every humble, sincere follower of 
Christ is far more ability for good service 
in the world than he dare dream of. 
Was it not Mr. Moody who said : " The 
world has yet to see what God can ac- 
complish through a man wholly conse- 
crated to him" ? 

We may all profitably cultivate the 
resolute spirit of that group of boys who 
once banded themselves into an organi- 
zation with this ambitious program of 
action : 

" Resolved : That the world is upside 
down. 

137 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Ability " Resolved : That the world must be 
Imposes turne d r i gnt s [^ e up> 

biliu " R es °l ve d : That we are the ones to 
do it." 

After all, a vast deal of good work for 
Christ is going on in the world, and 
against this background of Christian ac- 
tivity the figure of the loafer shows in 
the most unattractive light. There is a 
time and place in which to loaf. A man 
is none the less manly who, having done 
his year's work with fidelity, loiters be- 
side a running stream or throws himself 
in utter abandonment on some velvet 
greensward. But a loafer in the midst 
of the market-place, where traffic is go- 
ing on from morn till night, ought to 
be drummed out of the company and 
made to move on. So a Christian who, 
in the first years of this century of oppor- 
tunity, shirks his Christian task should 
be ordered to the rear. 

A real Christian cannot keep his relig- 
ion to himself; it must escape from him 
somewhere, somehow, and it must be 
made evident to others. It might do a 
man good personally to go out into the 
138 



WAYSIDE MINISTRIES 

wilderness, beyond earshot of his fellows, Ability 
and shout, " I believe in Jesus Christ, the I m P oses 
only begotten Son of God." Such pri- ^.T w 
vate confession is no doubt well pleasing 
to the Master, but it must be quickly fol- 
lowed up by something more public. In 
one form and another he is continually 
saying this in the Gospels : " Get your 
religion at work. Do not bury it in the 
ground or fold it up in a napkin or put it 
under a bushel. Display it where men 
can see it and be cheered and braced 
thereby." Christianity was never meant 
to be a cloistered affair. It was designed 
to be brought constantly to the attention 
of mankind, and Jesus expects that the 
men who believe in it shall do with it 
what they do with everything else in 
which they heartily believe. Tell others 
about it, commend it, be enthusiastic 
about it, be frank and open in champion- 
ing it. 

There are times and seasons, to be Times 
sure. There are foolish and there are and 
wise ways. We should respect our 
brother's personality. We should avoid 

139 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Times the ostentatious buttonholing process. 
and -yy e sho^d no i ma k e ourselves, as we 
seek to bring others to Christ, bores or 
gain the reputation of being cranks. 
The good fisherman chooses his bait care- 
fully and selects streams where he will be 
most likely to find his fish. The fishing 
habit — or in some cases the fishing pas- 
sion — itself dictates the instrument to be 
used. Let us get lodged in our souls the 
yearning to save men and the form of its 
expression will take care of itself. 

These are not days when men wear 
their hearts on their sleeves. They must 
be sought patiently, tenderly, persistently. 
" The Son of man came to seek and to 
save that which was lost." The divine 
search preceded the divine sacrifice. 
Men ought to understand that we are 
after their souls. We ought not to be 
afraid to avow our steady intention to 
win them for Christ. 

Some souls are shy. They evade the 
gaze of the public. They have gotten 
into out-of-the-way places ; they may 
have wandered thither, as did the witless 
sheep, through no fault of theirs. They 
140 



WAYSIDE MINISTRIES 

may have slipped into a corner out of the Times 
view of every one. We need to be cir- a ** 
cumspect as well as zealous, delicate as 
well as persistent, in our search after 
these shy, shrinking souls. We shall 
have to go more than halfway in order 
to find them. We may have to over- 
come many an obstacle, to light every 
lamp whose gleam we can bring to bear 
upon the darkness. But the souls are 
still precious ; they have the stamp of the 
divine valuation upon them. But it is 
our task to approach them so lovingly 
and persuasively that they shall be glad 
to be borne back on our shoulders to the 
safe lodging and never again to stray 
away from their home in God. 

" Under whose preaching were you Way 
converted? " asked some one of a young and 
man who had recently found the Saviour. Means 
He replied, " Under no one's preaching ; 
I was converted by my aunt's practicing." 
A similar statement was made by a young 
minister at the time of his ordination. 
At one period in his life he was almost 
an infidel, but he said, " There was one 

141 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Ways argument in favor of Christianity which 
an d I could never refute— the consistent con- 
duct of my father." In these two testi- 
monies is illustrated one effective method 
for bringing others to Christ. Let your 
life be a continual invitation to come to 
him. Mr. Moody said, " A man may 
preach with the eloquence of an angel, 
but if he does n't live what he preaches 
and act out in his home and in his 
business what he professes, his teaching 
goes for naught, and people will say it is 
all a sham." 

Another method is that adopted by 
Andrew on a certain memorable after- 
noon when he sought " his own brother 
Simon " and " brought him unto Jesus " ; 
by Philip when he brought Nathanael ; 
by the woman of Samaria who hastened 
back to the city, forgetting her water pot 
in the joy of finding a well, and told the 
story of her discovery in such a con- 
vincing manner that many believed on 
the Christ simply through her eager evi- 
dence. It would be hard to improve 
upon this old-fashioned method which 
our Lord himself instituted by saying to 
142 



WAYSIDE MINISTRIES 

individual men, " Follow me." He did Ways 
not at first issue a general call to every- an d 
body but selected his disciples one by 
one. 

If really in earnest in our desire to win 
souls we will never give up the effort. 
We will keep such a grip upon them as 
did the young medical student of whom 
Professor Drummond tells, who found 
another fellow that was fast drinking 
himself to death. The friend took him 
to his own home and watched over him 
day and night. One evening the fellow 
threw down his book and said he wanted 
to " bust." " All right," was the reply, 
" bust here." His friend stood by him in 
the extremity of his temptation and finally 
had the joy of seeing him emerge into a 
useful Christian life. 

The providence of God puts us in 
neighborly relations in bur offices, our 
school life, our clubs, our journeys. 
Without intruding upon others or be- 
coming meddlesome, we can be their 
good Samaritans spiritually. We can 
open our eyes and see what they need, 
our purses and relieve their destitution, 

143 



and 
Means 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Ways our hearts and comfort them. If we are 
swayed with Christ's own passion for 
helpfulness, we need not fear that we 
shall blunder. Old Father Vassar once 
approached a very worldly woman on 
the subject of her soul's salvation. At 
the dinner table that evening, as she re- 
lated the interview to her husband, he 
said, " Why did n't you tell him to go 
about his business ? " " Husband, if you 
had been there you would have thought 
that he was about his business." If we 
make it our Christian business to be 
helpful, to be neighborly, other souls 
will rise up and bless us, just as we to- 
day thank God for the good neighbors 
who have touched our lives. 

Sticking This is an age in which impulses to 
t0 ** service take root and flourish for a time in 
many hearts. We are all touched more or 
less by the altruistic spirit abroad in the 
earth. It is encouraging to find as we 
move abroad in the world so many per- 
sons who want to do good — society girls 
wearied of the round of parties and re- 
ceptions, young business men who have 
144 



WAYSIDE MINISTRIES 

come to see that the amassing of wealth Sticking 
is not the noblest end of activity, long- t0 ** 
time members of churches who are com- 
ing to their pastors asking to be set at 
work. Such an attitude on the part of 
so many is one of the signs that Christ is 
more and more touching the hearts of 
God's children and making them restless 
unless they are speeding on his errands. 
But, after all, it is also an age of dab- 
bling in well-doing. How many wrecks 
of good resolutions, how many intermit- 
tent and fruitless endeavors in behalf of 
others we see as we look back over the 
track of the years. That raw but rather 
attractive youth whom we first met as a 
waiter in a city restaurant and whom we 
tried to induce to attend church — what 
has become of him now ? We tried at 
least four times to do him good, and he 
responded for a while, but before long 
we lost our grip on him. That shiftless 
woman whom you undertook to teach 
the first principles of good housekeeping 
and to instruct in the rudiments of plain 
sewing — with what enthusiasm you en- 
tered upon this effort, but how it all 

145 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Sticking ebbed away as you found how hard it 
t0 h was to accomplish your purpose. That 
determination, made the first of last Jan- 
uary, to be more faithful to our prayer- 
meeting and bear our part there regu- 
larly — we really meant to carry it out, 
but a famous lecturer came along the 
second week in January and on the third 
week a concert which we could not af- 
ford to miss, and the following week we 
were invited out to supper, and now, 
somehow, we have gotten out of the way 
of going at all. Oh, how many such chap- 
ters have been written, over and over 
again, in the modern history of Christian 
men and women ! 

I have always admired the good Sa- 
maritan, not only for his kindly impulses, 
but for the thoroughness with which he 
did his benevolent work. He not only 
got down from his beast and bound up 
the wounds of the man by the wayside, 
but carried him to the inn and actually 
left money enough to pay his board until 
he himself should return to find out 
whether there was anything more to be 
done in behalf of his needy brother. To 

146 



WAYSIDE MINISTRIES 

do just one such thorough piece of Sticking 
worthy, Christlike ministration in the t0 If 
course of a year, to carry out one's good 
impulses to the very end, no matter how 
unlovely and unappreciative the person 
served is, no matter how much toil and 
sacrifice the work involves — this is the 
kind of patience in well-doing which 
Jesus and the apostles commended and 
illustrated. 



Fellowship does for a man just the Working 

with 
Others 



thing which he needs. If his portion of w 



the wall seems to get on slowly, if it is 
all he can do to lift one stone upon an- 
other, let him stand off for a moment and 
look down the long line of workers and 
see how their united activities are slowly, 
but surely, accomplishing the common 
task. Or if he thinks he is getting ahead 
of his colaborers, that his church is more 
prosperous, his Endeavor Society more 
active, his Christian service more widely 
beneficial, let him take a broad view of 
the various splendid agencies for good at 
work throughout the land and he will be 
humbled in spirit, and gratitude for what 

147 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Working he may have already accomplished will 
w *t" be mingled with a quiet determination 
to do more and better work. Again, if 
he is failing to get his stones in line or 
to build solidly, if he will but examine 
the labor of others, and learn from them 
how they are doing it, he will go back to 
rectify his mistake and build in such a 
way that his work will endure the judg- 
ment of the Master Builder. 

God uses workmen of different types. 
Dr. Vance, in his book, The College of 
the Apostles, has worked out sugges- 
tively the thought that when Jesus sent 
out his disciples two by two he divided 
them into pairs, not only that they might 
be company each for the other, but that 
one might supplement the other's lack. 
Simon, the radical, was yoked with An- 
drew, the conservative, Philip, the dullard, 
with Bartholomew, the sage, the doubt- 
ing Thomas with the dogmatic Matthew. 
There is force in this analysis of the 
qualities of that apostolic circle, even if 
we do not find sufficient evidence in the 
New Testament for all that is affirmed 
by Dr. Vance concerning each individual. 
148 



WAYSIDE MINISTRIES 

It helps us to come in contact with Chris- Working 
tian workers whose personal character- **'* 
istics differ widely from ours and who are 
engaged in different work. If the pastor 
of a fashionable metropolitan church 
would take supper once a month with a 
man running a rescue mission in the 
slums, good would accrue to both. 

Thus fellowship becomes a test of our 
Christian love. It is easy enough to 
have delightful relations with congenial 
spirits, but we are often placed in situa- 
tions where to carry on the work of our 
church or our Endeavor Society we must 
cooperate with those to whom we are 
not particularly drawn. A missionary 
to China when asked what his worst 
trial in missionary work was, responded, 
" My fellow missionaries." But it is a 
part of our Christian discipline that we 
have to learn to labor with those who 
may try us and whom, doubtless, we try. 

Much is gained by cherishing a hope- The 
ful outlook upon the world. We cannot Hopeful 
do much for humanity unless we have 
faith in it, unless we hold firmly to the con- 

149 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

The viction that it is worth redeeming. It is 
Hopeful harci^ in the face of ingratitude and cold- 
ness and the falling away of those whom 
we try to help, to maintain this optimistic 
attitude, but Jesus did it, and it was one 
great secret of his success. Those are 
sad lines in which a man confesses how 
the estimate of others dragged him down : 

They thought me what I said I was ; 
I became what they thought I was. 

To better the world begin right where 
you are. Most of us must serve our 
God in that " station of life whereunto 
we are called." Take hold of the han- 
dles and levers and sources of influence 
and uplift that are just within your reach. 
They seem so small as hardly to be visi- 
ble, but look at them with the eyes of 
Christ and they will greaten before you, 
and the little ways of serving him will 
become large and radiant. 

q-fo The joy in finding the lost arises in 

Reach part from feeling that we have brought 

°f the thing that was astray back to where 

•^ it belongs. The proper place for the 

piece of silver was the woman's purse 

150 



WAYSIDE MINISTRIES 

, . i 

and not an obscure corner of the room. The 
Ian Maclaren, in the touching story, Like R * ach 
as a Father, tells how when Flora Camp- j n fl uence 
bell returned from her wanderings in 
London, a penitent and heart-sick girl, 
her father, Lachlan, whose pride had led 
him when she ran away to erase her 
name from the family Bible, made this 
fresh entry : 

Flora Campbell, 

Missed, April, 1873. 

Found, September, 1873. 

When we bring another soul back to his 
Father and ours we are restoring that 
which has been missed and yearned 
over, but not forgotten, and in the joy of 
the reconciliation we may have a share. 

To set a train of influences at work 
which shall operate when we are for- 
gotten — is there any keener joy than 
this? But when we bring a man to 
Christ we may be furnishing him with 
one who shall shine like a jewel as he 
turns many to righteousness, who shall 
do a much better work for God and men 
than we with our limited abilities would 
ever be able to accomplish. What a joy 

151 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

"The in after years it must have been to An- 
Reacn d rew to see the important place which 
Influence ^ s brother Peter, whom he introduced to 
Christ, took in his discipleship and service! 
Individual work yields the greatest 
satisfaction. Henry Clay Trumbull de- 
clares, as he nears the later years of his 
long, eventful and productive life as 
chaplain, editor and author, that he has 
derived more real joy from personal con- 
versation with strangers touching Christ 
and Christian things than from any other 
form of Christian service which he has so 
nobly rendered. It was Mr. Moody's 
Sunday-school teacher who brought him 
to Christ. There was one year in which 
only a single addition by confession was 
recorded in the church in the little Scot- 
tish village of Blantyre, but that convert 
was David Livingstone, and the minister 
or Sunday-school teacher or friend who 
brought him to Christ must have felt to 
his dying day the thrill of satisfaction at 
such an achievement. Years ago a min- 
ister had a preaching appointment on a 
rainy Sunday evening in a college town. 
He came and went, having discharged 
152 



WAYSIDE MINISTRIES 

his duty, wearied and disappointed. The The 
congregation was small, and no notable ^ ach 
token was given him that his words had j n fl uence 
gone home to any heart. A score of 
years later a book was published which 
because of its insight into spiritual things 
commended itself widely to the Christian 
world. The minister, who had then be- 
come a bishop, wrote to the author 
thanking him for the profit derived from 
the book. A reply came swiftly back to 
this effect. " Do you remember preach- 
ing one Sunday evening at Williams 
College twenty years ago ? I was in the 
audience, and what you said quickened 
within me impulses which have fruited 
into this book." 

We might multiply instances of this 
sort. Christian annals abound in them. 
You never can begin to calculate the 
ultimate results flowing from the effort 
to win men from selfishness and to estab- 
lish them in the righteous life. It is our 
unspeakable privilege, as we move for- 
ward along the Christian way, to stretch 
out helping hands to many a weak and 
needy brother. 

153 



THE GUIDE 
AND THE GOAL 



The chief want in life is somebody who shall make 
us do the best we can. — Emerson. 

The heart of our age clings to the Christ. — G. S. 
Coe. 

They who long after God will be ever turning 
their eyes thitherward. — Horace Bushnell. 

I know men and tell you that Jesus is not a man. 
He is truly a being by himself. — Napoleon. 

Sweetest thoughts shall fail and learning falter, 

Churches change, forms perish, systems go, 
But our human needs, they will not alter, 

Christ no after age shall e'er outgrow. 
Yea, Amen ! O changeless One, thou only 

Art life's guide and spiritual goal, 
Thou the light across the dark vale lonely, 

Thou the eternal haven of the soul ! 

— John Campbell Shairp. 



VII 

THE GUIDE AND THE 
GOAL 

We must get our own thought of Our 
Christ. The world is full of books in °™ 
which the thoughts of others about him 
are expressed in beautiful language. 
Raphael and Fra Angelico have put 
their thought of him into pictures that 
are the admiration of the world. Poets 
have sung their sweetest strains when 
their inspiration has been the thought of 
Christ. It is not so important that your 
thought of Christ should harmonize ex- 
actly with some one else's or with the 
accepted standard around you as it is 
that it shall be your own personal 
possession — something which you prize 
because you have wrought it out, some- 
thing that occupies a high and solitary 
place like the thought of your mother, 
or the thought of your happy and inno- 

157 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

cent childhood, or the thought of the 
richest and most joyous experience of 
later years. 

Lord The appeal of Christ to modern life 
and g ets - ts strength in great part because 
our age is looking for a spiritual master, 
a social leader and deliverer. Christ 
comes to youth, conscious of power, 
burning with ambition, capable of doing 
great and chivalrous things, and says : 
" Here are ideals ample and alluring ; 
here is the true center and point of 
departure for your activities ; here is 
guidance which will never fail you ; here 
is control which need never grow irk- 
some ; here is that mastery of life under 
which your powers may unfold normally, 
beautifully, effectively; here is an in- 
fluence yielding to which you shall 
become noble." Many of us begin thus 
with Christ as Master, as the one who 
respects our ambition to be up and 
doing, nay, who plants in us that im- 
pulse. He has shed so much inspiration 
over life that we cannot help yielding to 
his charm and his sway. And having 

158 



THE GUIDE AND THE GOAL 

begun by enrolling ourselves among his 
followers we go on perhaps quickly, 
perhaps gradually, to realize other re- 
lationships which he sustains to us be- 
sides that of Lord and Master. 

We learn in time that he is our com- Comrade 
rade also. True it is that he never con- 
ditioned loyalty to him on one's ability 
constantly to realize intimacy of fellow- 
ship with him. The sufficient test of 
discipleship is the steadfast purpose to 
follow in his steps. We must not re- 
proach ourselves too much when we 
find it difficult to grasp the great truth 
that the unseen Jesus is as truly with us 
as the man who works at the same bench 
or who sits by our side in the street car. 
We are subject to physical weariness and 
mental depression, and in certain moods 
and under certain conditions it is almost 
impossible to realize the verities of the 
spiritual world. 

If we keep on obeying our Master 
there will surely come to us what Phillips 
Brooks so aptly calls " Jesus moments," 
when we shall be thrilled by a sense of 

159 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Comrade his nearness. Sometimes as we wander 
on the seacoast at night, we see in the 
distance the intermittent flashing of a 
light, succeeded by regular periods of 
darkness. But we know that if we look 
long enough the bright rays will stream 
out again over the ocean. So if in the 
dark places of our lives we keep looking 
at Christ he will surely manifest himself to 
us. Meanwhile we can rejoice that he is 
shining upon some other needy voyager. 
The best companionship does not de- 
pend on neighborhood in space. Per- 
haps some one halfway across the conti- 
nent is more truly your comrade than a 
person who eats three meals a day at the 
same table with you. Love bridges great 
distances. Fondness for the same things 
annihilates space. There is no more ante- 
cedent improbability that you cannot have 
fellowship with the great being whom we 
call Christ, than there is that you cannot 
truly keep in touch with the friend who 
is leaving you to-day for a journey around 
the world. 

But we must use the natural means of 
promoting companionship. We must 

160 



THE GUIDE AND THE GOAL 

know the earthly Jesus well in order to Comrade 
walk with the heavenly Jesus. Do you 
ponder the gospel story, do you some- 
times at the beginning of the day take a 
single incident in Jesus' career, or a 
parable or a miracle, and bear it always 
in your mind to be thought of when 
there comes a lull in your busy hours, 
when you are looking aimlessly out of a 
car window, when you are waiting for a 
friend ? This is one of the best methods 
for securing a sense of his constant com- 
panionship. Better than mountain rhap- 
sodies is the consciousness of Christ's 
friendship along each day's dusty high- 
way. 

" Can two work together except they 
be agreed?" Only as we think the 
thoughts of Jesus, cherish his ambitions, 
cultivate his charitable and loving tem- 
per towards all men, practice his deeds 
of kindness and mercy, can we have this 
intimate fellowship. It is almost an 
affront to him to conceive of daily inti- 
macy with him simply that it may pro- 
duce for us a certain pleasurable emo- 
tional glow. He wants companions of 

161 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Comrade his cross, of his solitary way, men and 
women who share his intense yearning 
in behalf of the suffering and the lost. 

The world is more and more sensing 
the practicability of such a relationship 
to Jesus Christ. We are seeing that 
Christianity, if it means anything, must 
touch and color all our thinking, all our 
living. So this great, central truth of 
the New Testament, on which mystics 
throughout the ages have lived, which 
has sometimes seemed altogether out of 
reach for the ordinary man, becomes 
practical, becomes the truth on which 
we every-day people may live. I once 
asked Dr. Grenfell how, in his busy life 
as a sailor, a physician and a missionary 
up and down the Labrador coast, he 
could find time for prayer. In his sim- 
ple, straightforward way he replied, " It 
doesn't make so much difference how 
much time you spend in prayer, pro- 
vided you are constantly thinking of 
Christ as right at hand." He did not 
mean to disparage prayer, but only to 
bring out a living truth, a fact of daily 
experience to which not only he, but 
162 



THE GUIDE AND THE GOAL 

hundreds of Christians who are obeying 
Christ in all parts of the world to-day- 
can bear witness. 

An interesting passage in the life of Brother 
Dr. R. W. Dale tells of the comfort he 
derived when his little child died, from 
the thought of Christ as his brother. 
That single phase of the Saviour's rela- 
tion to him seemed to fit his immediate 
need best. Sooner or later every one 
finds himself wanting just this special 
ministration from the Son of man. His 
Saviourship, his Mastership, his Kingship, 
his friendship — each has its own value 
and importance for the Christian life, but 
times arise when we like to think of 
Jesus, not as some compassionate person 
from another and different realm of life, 
but as the closest of blood relations, as 
bound up with our personal identity as 
no outsider, however dear as a friend, 
can be. It is the same feeling which a 
man has when his brother has earned a 
fortune while he himself has remained 
poor, or become the idol of a nation 
while he continues in his old-time ob- 

163 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Brother scurity. But he knows, and he rejoices 
to know, that his successful and famous 
brother cannot, will not, would not dis- 
own the one who played by his side in 
childhood and partook of the same 
parental care. 

If Jesus be our brother indeed, it 
means that he understands the forces of 
our nature. Who better than a brother or 
a sister can realize the power of inherited 
passions, or of a moody disposition, or 
of a weak and vacillating will? The 
same blood which flows in his veins 
flows in yours. You may have gotten a 
little better mastery of your pride or 
your avarice, but the seeds of it are still 
in your nature as in his. Therefore you 
know how to be pitiful, to be merciful, 
as the man of alien blood, however natu- 
rally sympathetic, cannot be. " Where- 
fore it behooved him in all things to be 
made like unto his brethren." That 
means also that no sorrow, no bereave- 
ment can come to us which is not 
actually Jesus' sorrow too. It hurts him 
in the same way that it hurts us. " In 
all their affliction he was afflicted." 
164 



THE GUIDE AND THE GOAL 

But if he shares our nature we share Brother 
his: 

And every virtue we possess, 

And every victory won, 
And every thought of holiness, 

Are his and his alone. 

We share with him those impulses which 
sweep one along toward holiness and 
God. The humble painter who gazed 
upon the works of Raphael and Murillo 
said, reverently but resolutely, " And I, 
too, am a painter." Conscious though 
we are of blemish and stain, we are justi- 
fied in saying, as we look upon the spot- 
less character of our elder Brother, " We, 
too, are children of the same Father." 
The secret of his exaltation was his love 
and pursuit of goodness, simple good- 
ness, and in proportion as we share our 
royal Brother's passion for righteousness 
will he not be ashamed to call us brethren. 

We think oftener of Christ as Brother, High 
Leader, Friend than as High Priest. Priest 
When Christianity was new in the world, 
and a teacher of the first century was try- 

165 



STEPS CHRI'STWARD 

High ing to explain to the Hebrew people its 
Priest SU p er iority over their own faith, he natu- 
rally emphasized the priestly functions 
of Jesus and proved that the new system 
was better because its representative was 
better. The idea of a priest was wrought 
into the heart of the Jewish faith. If 
Christianity were to take the place of the 
old religion it must supply that w r hich 
was central to it. So, if one to-day were 
trying to bring a Roman Catholic into 
personal relations with Jesus, it might be 
the very best way of approach to declare 
that he takes the place of the elaborate 
priestly and sacramental system to which 
this Romanist has probably been accus- 
tomed from youth. 

With us modern Protestants this 
phase of the service of Christ to human- 
ity does not assume primary importance, 
and we are not to condemn ourselves 
because the book of Hebrews does not 
at the first reading interest us so much 
as most of the other books of the New 
Testament. We ought to get at Christ 
naturally, simply, through ways of ap- 
proach that lead easily from us to him, 

166 



THE GUIDE AND THE GOAL 

On the other hand, we should not rashly High 
affirm that the priestly side of Christ's P rtest 
character means nothing to us. There 
must be something in the old Hebrew 
economy and in the stately ritual of the 
Roman Catholic Church that answers 
the eternal need of the human heart, 
and as our religious life deepens we shall 
have a growing appreciation of that in 
Christ which corresponds to the priestly 
functions in other religions. 

Who has not at some time longed for 
some middle man between himself and 
the pure and infinite God ? Instinctively 
we shield ourselves behind the superior 
virtue of another, some saintly mother, 
some high-minded friend. We think 
that they can represent our case to God 
better than we can. Every now and 
then some human figure towers up above 
its contemporaries and to it men look 
for support and inspiration, just as 
through all the years of his ministerial 
life frail, tempted humanity clung to 
Phillips Brooks. But Jesus for all time 
and for all men has pierced the veil be- 
tween mankind and the infinite and un- 

167 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

High seen One. In him, blended perfectly and 
Priest altogether uniquely, are the two qualities 
that make the priest : first, he was like 
unto his brethren; they have always 
known him as akin to them from the 
point of view of temptation, struggle 
and suffering. In the second place he 
was " separate from sinners." He had 
points of affinity to God, nay, he was 
God manifested in the flesh. So we see 
him at one moment as our human 
Brother, sharing our nature, and at the 
next moment illuminated and glorified 
by the coursing through him of the 
very life of God. Therefore we are 
willing, nay, we yearn, to put our hand 
in his and let him present us to the 
Father. 

And when we have thus been saved 
and shrived by our great High Priest, 
does not the impulse come to seek to be 
to others in this particular what Jesus 
has been to us? Our priestly service 
will always be partial — only Christ can 
complete it — but we may help him to 
present all men perfect before the Fa- 
ther. 

168 



THE GUIDE AND THE GOAL 

» Thou shalt call his name Jesus ; for it Saviour 
is he that shall save his people from their 
sins." Christ may seem to be more to 
us in other relations, but we need his 
Saviourship too. I should like to see 
the man who can fight his battle through 
to victory without in some way availing 
himself of Jesus Christ's power to forgive 
and to save. He who takes him as 
Master will soon find that he needs him 
as a Saviour too in order that what is 
lacking, and always will be lacking, may 
be completed by one so thoroughly 
identified with us that he can stand for 
us as the type of what we ought to be. 
Have your own theory of the atonement, 
or have no theory at all, but think long 
and live long before you declare that you 
have no need of the Saviourship of Christ. 

Whether we want it to be so or not, Judge 
the fact remains that Christ is judging us 
daily and will be the judge of our finished 
lives. It is within our power to reject 
his friendship and his saving power, but 
his judgment we cannot escape, for his 
own words affirm, " The Father . . . hath 

169 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Judge given all judgment unto the Son." 
There is nothing strange or arbitrary 
about this, for the ultimate verdict which 
history puts upon laws and institutions 
and customs and men conforms to the 
standards of Jesus Christ. The white 
light of his character shines through all 
disguises and reveals the reality. Prac- 
tically, we often act as if there were some 
other and lower standards. We are 
anxious to know what others think of 
this or that policy ; we are satisfied if 
our behavior tallies fairly well with the 
ideas as to propriety prevalent within 
" our set." How many of us hold up 
before Christ's pure eyes our actions, our 
words, our thoughts, our desires ? How 
can we call him Friend and Master un- 
less we are also willing to own him as 
Judge ? 

It is the thought of his searching and 
testing us constantly which lifts our lives 
to a high plane and detaches them from 
petty, mean and selfish standards of judg- 
ment. It creates a desire to be some- 
thing more than " as good as other peo- 
ple." With the apostle we become 

170 



THE GUIDE AND THE GOAL 

ambitious, whether present or absent, to Judge 
be well-pleasing unto him. " But," in- 
terposes somebody, "this makes life 
altogether too solemn and momentous. 
Must every little thing be referred to the 
standards of living which Christ exalted 
and exemplified ? That is making too 
severe a demand." But did he not say to 
fishermen, " Ye therefore shall be perfect, 
as your heavenly Father is perfect " ? 

Sobering, almost alarming, to some of 
us is the thought of Christ as Judge. On 
the other hand, what judgment could be 
kinder or fairer? We are to face the 
judgment seat, but let us never forget that 
it is the judgment seat of Christ — the 
Christ who knows man, who sees and 
sympathizes with every individual, who, 
having himself suffered, being tempted, 
is prepared to make allowance for human 
infirmities, who judges us not so much by 
what we are as by what we want and 
strive to be. 

There is no place where earth's sorrows 

Are more felt than up in heaven. 
There is no place where earth's failings 

Have such kindly judgment given. 

171 



Him 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

What What sort of a world should we have 
We had if Christ had never been present in 
its life? This speculation has been 
worked out pleasingly in fiction once 
or twice, notably in the delightful Christ- 
mas brochure entitled If Christ Had not 
Come, by Rev. J. D. Jones of Bourne- 
mouth, Eng. Any man who will stop 
and think can easily discover that, were 
Christ extracted from the world, it would 
be to hosts of human beings a barren and 
desolate place. We may even doubt 
whether the natural human impulses 
towards goodness, on which the ethical 
writers descant so volubly, would have 
sufficed to prevent this whole world from 
lapsing into disorder and perpetual strife. 

We owe to Jesus our idea of God. 
The assumptions behind all that Jesus 
said — most of all Jesus himself — answer 
our hearts' deepest yearnings to be as- 
sured of the fact of God's existence. 
More than that, the witness of Christ re- 
veals to us the kind of God in whom we 
can believe as our Creator and our Judge. 

We owe to Jesus our assurance of im- 
mortal life. Arguments can be cited 

172 



urn 



THE GUIDE AND THE GOAL 

growing out of the analogy of nature, of What 
the seed, out of the evolutionary process *^ e 
itself, out of the fact that men have al- ^ 
ways, to a greater or less degree, believed 
in a future life. But all these carry no 
such assurance as the words of the Mas- 
ter, " Whosoever liveth and believeth on 
me shall never die." 

We owe to Christ a new conception of 
our duty and the power wherewith to 
perform it. He, as no other, has re- 
vealed the glory of the common task and 
daily round. He has broadened our 
thought of duty. Best of all, he furnishes 
power wherewith to go on doing our 
duty, perhaps a little better to-day than 
yesterday. 

God, immortality, duty — these three 
great postulates of Kant to which George 
Eliot clung even when faith grew feeble — 
are they not certified to us and illumined 
by Jesus Christ ? Is there any one so 
fully conscious of God, so sure of his 
hope of another life, so wise as to his 
duty and so strong in the performance 
of it that he can dispense with what 
Christ has to give us concerning them ? 

173 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

What The Christian heart owes its debt to 
™ e Christ for a new sense of forgiveness and 
Hi peace with God. How our debts in- 
crease to him as we reflect ! And here is 
a simple test of the depth and genuine- 
ness of our Christian life. How much, 
after all, do we owe to Christ ; could we 
get along without him ? How much in 
our thinking, in our feeling, in our ac- 
tions proceeds from him ? 

Why It matters little if changes take place 
in the region of our thought and emo- 

fli m tion, provided the one great force for 
righteousness in our lives endures, and 
Jesus Christ remains the same, yesterday, 
to-day and forever. We may of course 
know him better and realize more fully 
his many-sidedness, but the change in 
our thought of him always tends to 
greaten him as he becomes the one es- 
sential element of our spiritual nutriment, 
the minister of the life of God to us, the 
interpreter of dark problems, the Friend 
and Brother, the Lord and Saviour. 

This is what he meant by his plain, 
bold statement, " I am the bread of life." 
174 



THE GUIDE AND THE GOAL 

It means nothing to him who will not Why 
recognize any other life than the self- *T e 
centered one, who drowns his heaven- ^- m 
ward aspirations as he plunges into the 
current of this world's interests. But any 
one who realizes that God meant him to 
live, not as the brutes that perish, but as 
his own child, soon sees that what he 
needs in his effort to lift himself above 
the things of earth is not an abstract sys- 
tem of ethics, not cold, distant ideals, but 
a living, loving, radiant presence, yet not 
so exalted as to be above " human na- 
ture's daily food." 

Religion is an affair between persons. 
It is not going through a certain routine. 
It is not assent to a series of intellectual 
propositions. It is the response of heart 
to heart. It is personal love and loyalty 
to a personal Lord. We are made to 
love Christ ; Christ is worthy of our love. 
That is all. We cannot analyze the re- 
lation. We may not want to talk much 
about it, but we know that our hearts 
turn toward that majestic figure who 
stands with outstretched arms. Said 
Frederick Robertson, " There is one 

175 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Why thing in regard to which I refuse to per- 
J^ e mit discussion, and that is the love the 
jjj m Christian soul bears to its Redeemer." 

Jesus' own loveliness is the primary 
ground of our affection for him. We 
see in him a being worthy of our utmost 
powers of loving. He realizes to us the 
ideal of manhood. We have known 
persons, and we have met them in 
books, who have fascinated us and have 
aroused and still hold our deepest affec- 
tion, but Jesus in the full roundness of 
his character so far surpasses them that 
the language of the mystical hymn- 
writers of the middle ages seems none 
too strong to take upon our lips : 

Jesus, name all names above, 
Jesus, best and dearest ! 

Jesus, fount of perfect love, 
Holiest, tenderest, nearest. 

Add to this inherent loveliness of 
Jesus' character the fact that he loves us 
and it becomes impossible to do any- 
thing else but love him. Fairest as he is 
among men, unless we knew that he 
loved us the affection roused by the 
176 



THE GUIDE AND THE GOAL 

beauty of his character might, in time, Why 
languish. Now, however, we know, as W~ e 
every man who has trusted and tried to g- 
follow Jesus knows, that he has done 
what no other influence could accom- 
plish for us. He has interpreted life's 
mysteries and problems. He has fur- 
nished help over the hard places. He 
has kindled again and again hope and 
courage when they were disappearing 
under the strain of the daily burden. He 
has opened a new world of thought and 
feeling. He has stood near when earthly 
comforts and satisfactions were powerless 
to console. Best of all, he has, we dare 
to hope, taken some of the selfishness, 
meanness and badness out of us, saved 
us from our worst selves, and made us 
more worthy to be called the sons of God. 

And so the Christian life looms large 
before us, as we think of it in successive 
stages. From start to goal there is 
orderly progressive movement. The foes 
are never, in these mortal years at least, 
completely vanquished, but we learn day 
by day to lean more heavily on the 

177 



STEPS CHRISTWARD 

Why helps by the way. As the journey 
]^ e lengthens we can look back upon many 
jj im a waymark that tells of conquest and of 
progress. The rewards, as we persevere, 
grow more ample and satisfying. The 
opportunities for wayside ministry are 
more quickly discerned and more eagerly 
embraced. And ever before us, not so 
far away as to be out of the range of 
vision but distant enough to call forth 
our supreme endeavors to follow after, 
rises the glorious figure of our Guide 
and Leader. Always to be stepping 
Christward — is there any life so rich, so 
deep, any life whose appeal to youth is 
so commanding, so irresistible ? 



178 



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